She watched them drive away, and then sat down to write to Chris. She marked the letter "Private," and underlined the word twice to draw attention to it. She wrote:
"My dear Chris,—Don't you think it's time you came home? Soon it will be five weeks since you went away, and it is a little hard on Marie, though she has not said one word of complaint to me. Mr. Dakers is very kind, taking her for drives, and looking in to cheer us up, but the child must want her own husband, and you have been married such a little time. She does not know I am writing to you, and she would be very angry if she ever discovered it but take an old woman's advice, my dear boy, and come back."
She felt much happier when the letter had been despatched; she went 156 back to her knitting quite happily to wait events.
But events came sooner than she had anticipated, for the morning post brought a letter, which had evidently crossed hers, to say that Chris was already on his way home, but was breaking the journey at Windermere for a few days to stay with friends.
"So he cannot have had my letter!" Miss Chester thought in dismay. She hoped it would eventually reach him.
If she had been uneasy about young Atkins, she was much more perturbed about Feathers. She fully recognized the strength of the man and the attraction he would undoubtedly have for some women, and she knew that he was already too interested in Marie.
"Chris ought never to have gone away alone," was her distressed thought. "If he had taken Marie with him, it would have been all right."
And down in the Hampshire woods Marie was just then saying to Feathers: "I do wish Aunt Madge had come! Wouldn't she have loved it?"
"I think she would. Perhaps she will come some other time."
They had brought their own lunch and had camped at the foot of a mossy bank on the shady side of the road.