“Don’t Mason’s things fit me well? She’s just my figure. I took this dress, jacket and hat from her box and put them into mine when I left Ryhall in the car. I thought they’d come in useful.”
I looked at her, and saw that with her brown hair brushed severely from her forehead, her small close-fitting hat and slightly shabby black jacket she was quite a demure little figure. The exact prototype of the newly-married wife of a working-man.
“It’s really quite a suitable get-up, I think,” I said, laughing.
“Yes. I’ve decided to explain to the curious that I was a lady’s-maid, and that we’ve been married nearly a year. Recollect that—in order to tell the same story. Where’s the ring? Did you think of that?” Yes, I had thought of it. I felt in my vest pocket, and taking out the plain little band of gold that I had bought in a shop in Regent Street that afternoon, placed it upon the finger, she laughing heartily, and then bending to examine it more closely in the uncertain light of the gas-lamps in Gray’s Inn Road.
“If I told you the truth, Wilfrid, you’d be horribly annoyed,” she said, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.
“No. What is it?” I asked.
“Well—only—only that I wish you were my real husband,” she answered frankly. “If you were, then I should fear nothing. But it cannot be—I know that.”
“What do you fear, Tibbie?” I asked, very seriously. “Tell me—do tell me.”
“I—I can’t—I can’t now,” was her nervous response in a harder voice, turning her gaze away from mine. “If I did, you would withdraw your help—you would not dare to risk your own reputation and mine, as you are now doing, just because we are old boy-and-girl friends.”
On we went through the streaming downpour along Chancery Lane and the Strand, the driver lowering the window, for the rain and mud were beating into our faces.