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She said,
“I was going to go as far as I could. Because they’ll look for me, you know-they’re bound to. And then I was going to get a cottage to take me in, and try and get some work to do.”
He was appalled. She had said it before. He remembered that now. He said,
“No one would take you in like that.”
“Wouldn’t they?”
“Not respectable people-not the sort of people you ought to be with.”
She said, “Oh-” and then, “Are you sure?”
“I’m quite sure.”
There was a little pause. She said,
“Then what am I to do?”
He said, “I’m going to stay with an aunt. She’s a very nice person. She’s not a Forbes. She’s from the other side of the family. My father and mother were killed in an air raid-she looked after me. You’ll like her. Everyone does. Her name is Caroline Danesworth.”
Je
“She won’t when she sees you.” He felt so sure of this that it wasn’t until afterwards that he thought it was rather a strange thing to say.
Je
“Are you quite sure?”
He was quite, quite sure. He said so in a matter-of-fact way that carried conviction.
Je
Richard drove on through the night. He had taken on an obligation, and he knew it for what it was. It was a very serious obligation. She wasn’t really his business-that was what anyone would say. She wasn’t really a relation. A hundred years had gone by since Lady Georgina had been painted in her wedding-dress. That picture he knew only from a photograph of it in his father’s album. It was a good photograph. He wanted very much to see the original. And now he was driving away from Alington House and from the portraits.
Je
After a while his thoughts turned to Je
He looked down at Je
She smiled suddenly in her sleep. Her eyes half opened, looked at something he did not see, and closed again. Her lips moved. They said his name-“Richard Alington Forbes.” But was it his name that they said. Her father had borne it too, and the first Richard Alington Forbes who had married Jane and built Alington House.
Je
Chapter XIII
It was a very curious experience driving through the night with the sleeping girl. He had a sense of familiarity which there was nothing in the facts to justify. It was one of those experiences which you can’t talk about. If he was to talk of it, it would be gone. A line of poetry came into his mind:
“Thi
He didn’t know where that came from, but it was what would happen to this feeling if he ever spoke of it. He knew that if he kept it secret it would remain inviolate.
He drove steadily on. Mile after mile, mile after mile. An hour-two hours-three. He was going to get there too soon. He couldn’t wake Caroline up before dawn and say baldly, “I’ve brought you a girl.” Not tactful -not even with Caroline. He turned off the road on to Hazeldon Heath. It was getting on toward four o’clock. He thought he would sleep till seven and then be on his way to Caroline’s cottage. He was not conscious of feeling sleepy until he stopped driving, when it came over him in a rush. One moment he was ru
It took him a moment to get straight. She had been there when he went to sleep, he was quite sure of that. Well then, where was she now? He opened the door on his side and got out. As he did so he saw her bag, the one she had put down in the road when she talked to him in the night. It was on the back seat where he had put it. His heart gave a jump.
And then he saw her. She was coming across the patch of heath to his left. She had a singularly radiant air, as if there wasn’t such a thing as trouble in the world. Her head was bare. When she saw him she waved and called out,
“There’s a lovely place down there just behind those trees! Did you think I’d run away?”
It was exactly what he had thought, but he wasn’t going to say so. She laughed and said,
“I suppose you did!”
Then she came up to the car and got in.
“I had such a lovely sleep,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
He didn’t know exactly what she was thanking him for. He said so.
“What for?”
“Oh, everything. Are we near your aunt’s now?”
“Yes, quite near. If you don’t mind, I’ll go in first and explain you.”