visitation at that hour? How wise! How quenching to the gossip that must
in any case get abroad!

He turned the pony homewards.

Augustina, all shawls and twitching, opened the door to him. A message
had been sent on to her an hour before to the effect that Miss Fountain
had missed her train, and was not likely to arrive that night.

"Oh, _Alan_!--where is she?"

"I got a telegram through to the station-master. Don't be anxious,
Augustina. I asked him to direct her to the inn. The old White Hart, they
say, has passed into new management and is quite comfortable. She may
arrive by the first train--7.20. Anyway I shall meet it."

Augustina pursued him with fretful inquiries and surmises. Helbeck, pale
and gloomy, threw himself down on the settle, and produced the story of
the accident, so far as the garrulous and incoherent Polly had enabled
him to understand it. Fresh wails on Augustina's part. What a horrible,
horrible thing! Why, of course the child was terribly upset--hurt
perhaps--or she would never have been so foolish about the trains. And
now one could not even be sure that she had found a place to sleep in!
She would come home a wreck--a simple wreck. Helbeck moved uneasily.

"She was not hurt, according to Miss Mason."

"I suppose young Mason saw her off?"

"I suppose so."