To return to Bishop. Thrown off the trail in the wood, he pushed along the road as far as Windermere village. There, however, he could hear nothing. No one of Henrietta’s figure and appearance had been seen there. And in the worst of humours, with the world as well as with himself, he put about and returned to the inn. If the girl had come back during his absence, it was bad enough; he had had his trouble for nothing, and might have spared his shoe-leather. Hang such pretty frailties for him! But if, on the other hand, she had not come back, the case was worse. He had been left to watch her, and the blame would fall on him. Nadin would say more than he had said already about London officers and their uselessness. And if anything happened to her! Bishop wiped his brow as he thought of that, and of his next meeting with Captain Clyne. It was to be hoped, be devoutly hoped, that nothing had happened to the jade.
It wanted half an hour of sunset, when he arrived, fagged and fuming, at the inn; and if his worst fears were not realised, he soon had ground to dread that they might be. Miss Damer had not returned.
“I’ve no truck with them rubbishy radicals,” Mrs. Gilson added impersonally, scratching her nose with the handle of a spoon—a sign that she was ill at ease. “But they’re right enough in one thing, and that is, that there’s a lot of useless folk paid by the country—that’d never get paid by any one else! And for brains, give me a calf’s head!”
Bishop evaded the conflict with what dignity he might.
“The Captain’s not come in?” he asked.
“Yes, he’s come in,” the landlady answered.
“Well,” sullenly, “the sooner I see him the better, then!”
“You can’t see him now,” Mrs. Gilson replied, with a glance at the clock. “He’s sleeping.”
Bishop stared.
“Sleeping?” he cried. “And the young lady not come back?”