‘O Louis! why did you?’ she cried. ‘I am going to follow him; I think it best to do so; and I want to know if he is gone—and now the date is lost!’
‘Going to run after St. Cleeve? Absurd!’
‘Yes, I am!’ she said with vehement firmness. ‘I must see him; I want to speak to him as soon as possible.’
‘Good Lord, Viviette! Are you mad?’
‘O what was the date of that ship! But it cannot be helped. I start at once for Southampton. I have made up my mind to do it. He was going to his uncle’s solicitors in the North first; then he was coming back to Southampton. He cannot have sailed yet.’
‘I believe he has sailed,’ muttered Louis sullenly.
She did not wait to argue with him, but returned upstairs, where she rang to tell Green to be ready with the pony to drive her to Warborne station in a quarter of an hour.
XXXVIII
Viviette’s determination to hamper Swithin no longer had led her, as has been shown, to balk any weak impulse to entreat his return, by forbidding him to furnish her with his foreign address. His ready disposition, his fear that there might be other reasons behind, made him obey her only too literally. Thus, to her terror and dismay, she had placed a gratuitous difficulty in the way of her present endeavour.
She was ready before Green, and urged on that factotum so wildly as to leave him no time to change his corduroys and ‘skitty-boots’ in which he had been gardening; he therefore turned himself into a coachman as far down as his waist merely—clapping on his proper coat, hat, and waistcoat, and wrapping a rug over his horticultural half below. In this compromise he appeared at the door, mounted, and reins in hand.