‘Yes, it is my freehold. Grammer Stockwool is taking care o’ it for me.’
‘Good. And back there you go straightway, my pretty madam, and wait till your husband comes to make it up with you.’
‘I won’t go!—I don’t want him to come!’ she sobbed. ‘I want to stay here with you, or anywhere, except where he can come!’
‘You will get over that. Now, go back to the flat, there’s a dear Avice, and be ready in one hour, waiting in the hall for me.’
‘I don’t want to!’
‘But I say you shall!’
She found it was no use to disobey. Precisely at the moment appointed he met her there himself, burdened only with a valise and umbrella, she with a box and other things. Directing the porter to put Avice and her belongings into a four-wheeled cab for the railway-station, he walked onward from the door, and kept looking behind, till he saw the cab approaching. He then entered beside the astonished girl, and onward they went together.
They sat opposite each other in an empty compartment, and the tedious railway journey began. Regarding her closely now by the light of her revelation he wondered at himself for never divining her secret. Whenever he looked at her the girl’s eyes grew rebellious, and at last she wept.
‘I don’t want to go to him!’ she sobbed in a miserable voice.
Pierston was almost as much distressed as she. ‘Why did you put yourself and me in such a position?’ he said bitterly. ‘It is no use to regret it now! And I can’t say that I do. It affords me a way out of a trying position. Even if you had not been married to him you would not have married me!’