Part 67

Next morning they faced one another in a first class carriage on a homeward bound train.

"What shall I say to Lady Cromarty?" she asked, half smiling, half fearfully.

He reflected for a few minutes.

"Tell her the truth. Lies don't pay in the long run. I can bear witness to this part of the story, and to the Carrington part if necessary, though I don't want to give him away if I can help it."

"Oh no!" she said, "we mustn't interfere with him. But supposing Lady Cromarty doesn't believe----"

"Come straight to Stanesland! Will you?"

"Run away again?"

"It's the direction you run in that matters," said he. "Now, mind you, that's understood!"

She was silent for a little and then she said:

"I can't understand why these horrible stories associate Malcolm and me. Why should we have conspired to do such a dreadful thing?"

He stared at her, and then hesitated.

"Because--well, being engaged to him----"

"Engaged to Malcolm!" she exclaimed. "Whatever put that into people's heads?"

"What!" he cried. "Aren't you?"

"Good gracious no! Was that the reason then?"

He seemed too lost in his own thoughts to answer her; but they were evidently not unhappy thoughts this time.

"Who can have started such a story?" she demanded.

"Who started it?" he repeated and then was immersed in thought again; only now there was a grim look on his face.

"Well anyhow," he cried, in a minute or two, "we're out of that wood! Aren't we, Louisa?"

"Yes, Uncle Ned," she smiled back.

He stirred impulsively in his seat and then seemed to check himself, and for the rest of the journey he appeared to be divided between content with the present hour and an impulse to improve upon it. And then before he had realised where they were, they had stopped at a station, and she was exclaiming:

"Oh, I must get out here! I've left my bike in the station!"

"Look here," said he, with his hand on the door handle, "before you go you've got to swear that you'll come straight to Stanesland if there's another particle of trouble. Swear?"

"But what about Miss Cromarty?" she smiled.

"Miss Cromarty will say precisely the same as I do," he said with a curiously significant emphasis. "So now, I don't open this door till you promise!"

"I promise!" said she, and then she was standing on the platform waving a farewell.

"I half wish I'd risked it!" he said to himself with a sigh as the train moved on, and then he ruminated with an expression on his face that seemed to suggest a risk merely deferred.

XXIX