Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose.
“You mean to betray me!” she said from the bitterest depths of her soul. “Oh fool, fool I!”
“No,” said Grace, shortly. “I mean no such thing. But let us be quick now. We have a serious undertaking before us. Think of nothing but going straight on.”
They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now growing wet, and treading down woodbine, but still keeping a pretty straight course. Grace began to be thoroughly worn out, and her companion too, when, on a sudden, they broke into the deserted highway at the hill-top on which the Sherton man had waited for Mrs. Dollery’s van. Grace recognized the spot as soon as she looked around her.
“How we have got here I cannot tell,” she said, with cold civility. “We have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. The hazel copse is quite on the other side. Now we have only to follow the road.”
They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the track to Little Hintock, and so reached the park.
“Here I turn back,” said Grace, in the same passionless voice. “You are quite near home.”
Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission.
“I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as the grave,” she said. “I cannot help it now. Is it to be a secret—or do you mean war?”
“A secret, certainly,” said Grace, mournfully. “How can you expect war from such a helpless, wretched being as I!”