Having yielded, Mrs. Blake threw herself heart and soul into the scheme. She announced that painful recollections made Fordborough impossible as a place of residence, that Lottie was looking ill, and that they both required a thorough change. She dropped judiciously disagreeable remarks about her stepson till Addie was up in arms, and said that her mother and Lottie might go where they liked, but she should go to her aunt, Miss Blake, till Oliver, who was on his way, came home. Then Mrs. Blake shut up her house and went quietly off to Folkestone: Horace was to start from Dover in rather more than a fortnight's time.
After that the course was clear. Horace found out that he was worse, and must put off his departure for a week or ten days. Then, when the time originally fixed arrived, he said that he was better and would start at once. Naturally, Mrs. James was not ready, and he discovered that the house was intolerable with her dressmakers and packing, that he must break the journey somewhere, and that he might as well wait for her at Dover. The morning after his arrival there he took the train to Folkestone, met Lottie and her mother, went straight to the church, and came back to Dover a lonely but triumphant bridegroom, while Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Horace Thorne crossed at once to Boulogne.
It was necessary that Mrs. James should be enlightened, but Horace was not alarmed: he knew that she had no choice but to make common cause with him. Mrs. Blake, however, could hardly make up her mind what should be done about Addie. She more than suspected that the tidings would be a painful humiliation to her daughter. "We mustn't tell her," she said at last to Lottie. "She might be spiteful: it wouldn't be safe."
"It will be quite safe," said Lottie. "Because of what we used to say about Horace, you mean? But that is just what makes it safe. I know Addie: she won't let any one say that she betrayed me because she wanted Horace herself once. She said she didn't, but I think there was something in it; and if there was, she'd be torn in pieces sooner than let any one say so."
There was a curious straightforwardness about Lottie, even while she schemed and plotted. She calculated the effect of her sister's tenderness for Horace as frankly and openly as one might reckon on a tide or a train, and behaved as if the old saying, "All is fair in love and war," were one of the Thirty-nine Articles.
She wrote her letter without difficulty or hesitation. It was after Horace had joined them, and he laid his hand lightly on her shoulder as she was contemplating her new signature.
"Nearly done?" he said. "And who is to have the benefit of all this?"
"Addie: she ought to know."