Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/322

312 disdaining to reply. It was quite true; her story, which had seemed so smooth and pat, was only a tale fit to tell to children. How she herself would have smiled, if Madge had come to her with a history of the kind, expecting to be believed. And then, no doubt, Charlie would soon be free, even as she would. Yet, she had not thought of this before. What interpretation would be put on her proud silence, her disdaining to reply, if she married him?

And if they did not marry? But that she could not bear to contemplate. It was a thing unthinkable.

But on the intrusion of the unthinkable thought, the utter loneliness and desolation of her present position struck Lucia like a blow. Yet that, after all, was entirely her own fault, for how should anybody know what had happened, and how should anybody know where she was? This morning, according to her plans, no yesterday morning, according to—the plans she had spoken of to Mouse—she was supposed to leave town to go South. Of course, everybody thought she had done so. It was just eleven now; at this moment probably the train by which they were to have travelled was hooting the news of its departure. She wondered what Edgar had done. It would be exactly like his precision to go abroad according to the arrangements that had been made, and photograph the whole coastline of the Riviera. Well, she had done with that.

During that day she telephoned to Madge, intimating a catastrophe, and asking her to come. The answer came back that she was out of town, but was returning next day, and the message would be delivered. And all that day she sat alone; she dared not go out, for fear Charlie might come in her absence. Also, where was she to go?

Through those long lonely hours, and through the hours of Sunday, the knowledge of what had happened began to sink deeper into her mind, and she found now that, though two days ago she had said to herself that the worst had happened, the worst had but begun. At first there had been something even bracing about the shock; she was done for ever, even if the worst came to the worst, with the man she had grown to hate. Or, again, there was the chance that a lawyer might make something out of her feeble little child-story of how the evening had been passed. That hope was gone now, and though the man