“Drive on, please.”

Away! Just away! Enough that they had seen her—more than enough, perhaps!

“Drive on a little, then turn and go back to Town.” They wouldn’t begin again!

“Neither of ’em much good with is ‘ands, miss, but a proper spirit.”

Dinny nodded. Her hand was still over her mouth, for her lips were trembling. The driver looked at her.

“You’re a bit pale, miss—too much blood! Why not stop somewhere and ‘ave a drop o’ brandy?”

“Not here,” said Dinny, “the next village.”

“Baldock. Right-o!” And he put the car to speed.

The crowd had disappeared as they repassed the hotel. Two dogs, a man cleaning windows, and a policeman were the only signs of life.

At Baldock she had some breakfast. Conscious that she ought to feel relieved, now that the explosion had occurred, she was surprised by the foreboding which oppressed her. Would he not resent her having come as if to shield him? Her accidental presence had stopped the fight, and she had seen them disfigured, blood-stained, devoid of their dignities. She decided to tell no one where she had been, or what she had seen—not even Stack or her uncle.

Such precautions are of small avail in a country so civilised. An able, if not too accurate, description of the “Encounter at Royston between that well-known breeder of bloodstock, Mr. John Muskham– cousin to Sir Charles Muskham, Bart—and the Hon. Wilfrid Desert, second son of Lord Mullyon, author of The Leopard, which has recently caused such a sensation,” appeared in that day’s last edition of the Evening Sun, under the heading, “Fisticuffs in High Quarters.” It was written with spirit and imagination, and ended thus: “It is believed that the origin of the quarrel may be sought in the action which it is whispered was taken by Mr. Muskham over Mr. Desert’s membership of a certain Club. It seems that Mr. Muskham took exception to Mr. Desert continuing a member after his public acknowledgment that The Leopard was founded on his own experience. The affair, no doubt, was very high-spirited, if not likely to improve the plain man’s conception of a dignified aristocracy.”

This was laid before Dinny at dinner-time by her uncle without comment. It caused her to sit rigid, till his voice said: “Were you there, Dinny?”

‘Uncanny, as usual,’ she thought; but, though by now habituated to the manipulation of truth, she was not yet capable of the lie direct, and she nodded.

“What’s that?” said Lady Mont.

Dinny pushed the paper over to her aunt, who read, screwing up her eyes, for she had long sight.

“Which won, Dinny?”

“Neither. They just stopped.”

“Where is Royston?”

“In Cambridgeshire.”

“Why?”

Neither Dinny nor Sir Lawrence knew.

“He didn’t take you on a pillion, Dinny?”

“No, dear. I just happened to drive up.”

“Religion is very inflamin’,” murmured Lady Mont.

“It is,” said Dinny bitterly.

“Did the sight of you stop them?” said Sir Lawrence.

“Yes.”

“I don’t like that. It would have been better if a bobby or a knock-out blow—”

“I didn’t want them to see me.”

“Have you seen him since?”

Dinny shook her head.

“Men are vain,” said her aunt.

That closed the conversation.

Stack telephoned after dinner that Wilfrid had returned; but instinct told her to make no attempt to see him.

After a restless night she took the morning train to Condaford. It was Sunday, and they were all at church. She seemed strangely divided from her family. Condaford smelled the same, looked the same, and the same people did the same things; yet all was different! Even the Scottish terrier and the spaniels sniffed her with doubting nostrils, as if uncertain whether she belonged to them any more.

‘And do I?’ she thought. ‘The scent is not there when the heart is away!’

Jean was the first to appear, Lady Cherrell having stayed to Communion, the General to count the offertory and Hubert to inspect the village cricket pitch. She found Dinny sitting by an old sundial in front of a bed of delphiniums. Having kissed her sister-inlaw, she stood and looked at her for quite a minute, before saying: “Take a pull, my dear, or you’ll be going into a decline, whatever that is.”

“I only want my lunch,” said Dinny.

“Same here. I thought my dad’s sermons were a trial even after I’d censored them; but your man here!”

“Yes, one CAN ‘put him down.’”

Again Jean paused, and her eyes searched Dinny’s face.

“Dinny, I’m all for you. Get married at once, and go off with him.”

Dinny smiled.

“There are two parties to every marriage.”

“Is that paragraph in this morning’s paper correct, about a fight at Royston?”

“Probably not.”

“I mean was there one?”

“Yes.”

“Who began it?”

“I did. There’s no other woman in the case.”

“Dinny, you’re very changed.”

“No longer sweet and disinterested.”

“Very well!” said Jean. “If you want to play the love-lorn female, play it!”

Dinny caught her skirt. Jean knelt down and put her arms round her.

“You were a brick to me when I was up against it.”

Dinny laughed.

“What are my father and Hubert saying now?”

“Your father says nothing and looks glum. Hubert either says: ‘Something must be done,’ or ‘It’s the limit.’”

“Not that it matters,” said Dinny suddenly; “I’m past all that.”

“You mean you’re not sure what HE’LL do? But, of course, he must do what you want.”

Again Dinny laughed.

“You’re afraid,” said Jean, with startling comprehension, “that he might run off and leave you?” And she subsided on to her hams the better to look up into Dinny’s face. “Of course he might. You know I went to see him?”

“Oh?”

“Yes; he got over me. I couldn’t say a word. Great charm Dinny.”

“Did Hubert send you?”

“No. On my own. I was going to let him know what would be thought of him if he married you, but I couldn’t. I should have imagined he’d have told you about it. But I suppose he knew it would worry you.”

“I don’t know,” said Dinny; and did not. It seemed to her at that moment that she knew very little.

Jean sat silently pulling an early dandelion to pieces.

“If I were you,” she said at last, “I’d vamp him. If you’d once belonged to him, he couldn’t leave you.”

Dinny got up. “Let’s go round the gardens and see what’s out.”

CHAPTER 26

Since Dinny said no further word on the subject occupying every mind, no word was said by anyone; and for this she was truly thankful. She spent the next three days trying to hide the fact that she was very unhappy. No letter had come from Wilfrid, no message from Stack; surely, if anything had happened, HE would have let her know. On the fourth day, feeling that she could bear the suspense no longer, she telephoned to Fleur and asked if she might come up to them.

The expressions on her father’s and her mother’s faces when she said she was going affected her as do the eyes and tails of dogs whom one must leave. How much more potent was the pressure put by silent disturbance than by nagging!

Panic assailed her in the train. Had her instinct to wait for Wilfrid to make the first move been wrong? Ought she not to have gone straight to him? And on reaching London she told her driver: “Cork Street.”

But he was out, and Stack did not know when he would be in. The henchman’s demeanour seemed to her strangely different, as if he had retreated to a fence and were sitting on it. Was Mr. Desert well? Yes. And the dog? Yes, the dog was well. Dinny drove away disconsolate. At South Square again no one was in; it seemed as if the world were in conspiracy to make her feel deserted. She had forgotten Wimbledon, the Horse Show, and other activities of the time of year. All such demonstrations of interest in life were, indeed, so far from her present mood that she could not conceive people taking part in them.