The Alington Inheritance

She lifted her eyes to his face and said gravely,

“I don’t know.”

“I want you to. Just you and me. Please, Je

And with that the door opened and Mrs. Forbes came in. She was talking over her shoulder to Alan, who was behind her. When she straightened up and saw Mac and Je

“Oh, there you are, you two! Well, Je

“I had it last Christmas,” said Je

“You made it very nicely.”

Mrs. Forbes was gracious with a deliberate graciousness that was hard to put up with. Je

They went in to di

“Down among the dead men,

Down among the dead men,

Down among the dead men

Let him lie.”

Only it would have been, “Let her lie.” If she hadn’t slipped behind the curtain in the schoolroom she would have been over the edge. As it was, she had saved herself. No, she hadn’t pla

Chapter X

She said good-night when the time came. It was the last good-night that she would ever say to these people in this room. If they were ever to meet again it would be different for them all. Perhaps they would never meet again. She didn’t know, and there was no one to tell her. She went slowly up to her room and shut her door. She thought about locking it. And then she thought, “I mustn’t do anything different-not tonight. I mustn’t do anything to make them say, ‘Why did she do it?’ ” So she left the door unlocked. It wouldn’t have made any difference, because nobody tried it to see whether it was locked or not.

After she had waited for a little she took off her dress and hung it up in the great gloomy cupboard which ran across all one side of the room. It looked very lonely there. Such a big cupboard and only that one little lace dress, her everyday skirt, and the dark grey coat and skirt which she wore on Sundays. There was room in it for a hundred dresses. She had pleased herself sometimes by imagining that they were hanging there-dresses for every possible occasion, grave and gay. But not tonight. Because tonight her mind was full of other things.

She hung up her black lace dress and considered. She would take the grey coat and skirt. It was new, and it would be useful. And she would wear a white silk shirt and take the other one with her. She set her mind to what she would take. Brush and comb. Toothbrush and toothpaste. Face-cloth. Soap and nailbrush. She had a little case which she had used for week-ends when she was at school. It would hold these things, and the silk shirt and her pyjamas and two pairs of stockings. It wouldn’t hold anything more. It wouldn’t hold a change of underclothes-it was no good trying. She could tuck half-a-dozen handkerchiefs round the edge, and that was all.

As she turned from the packed case she saw her mother’s little Bible on the pedestal by the bed. She couldn’t part with that. It was a small book, and it slipped in beneath the pyjamas and was hidden there. She shut the bag and laid it on the chair by the window.

Then she put on her black laced shoes. She would have to leave her other two pairs behind, the spare pair of outdoor shoes and the indoor ones. No, she must have an indoor pair. A vision of getting sopping wet and having nothing to change into rose uncomfortingly in her mind. She made a parcel of both pairs, and felt somehow safer. But even at that moment she had a horrid feeling about leaving the little black satin pair she had worn that evening. There was no sense in taking them-not the least atom of sense-and she wasn’t going to take them, and that was that. But they were the nicest shoes she had ever had, and she didn’t know whether she would ever see them again. She had got them from Heather Peterson, who had got them from a cousin in a fit of hopefulness and because they were so pretty, and then found that they were too small and unless she wanted to take the chance of being disabled by cramp she couldn’t wear them.

Je

Time passed slowly. She was all ready to go. She didn’t know where. She only knew that she must go, and she must get as long a start as possible. She waited until twelve o’clock. All the sounds in all the rooms came to an end. The house was still. The house was very still. It was an old house-early seventeenth century. Je

He was Richard Forbes, and she was Jane. Je

She put out the light and sat down in the dark to wait. She must have fallen asleep, for she woke with a start and the air was colder. She put on the light and looked at her watch, the watch she didn’t wear openly because it was a family one given by her father to her mother, or so Garsty had said, though how she knew was more than Je