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"A telegram brings me here this same spot. But you won't wire from the village?" "Oh no, from Latchford." "Well, then, that's settled. Regard me, please, as your henchman. Well! have you read any Madame de Noailles?" He fancied he saw a slight impatient movement. "Not yet, I'm afraid. I've been living in a sick room."
Gertrude released herself by a sudden movement. "When were you at Monk Lawrence?" "Why, that afternoon, when you were in town. I missed my train at Latchford, and took a motor home." There was some consciousness in the girl's look and tone which did not escape her companion. She was evidently aware that her silence on the incident might appear strange to Gertrude.
Winnington had been called away to Wanchester by urgent County business; against his will, for there had been some bad rioting the day before at Latchford, and he would rather have gone to help his brother magistrates. But there was no help for it. Lady Tonbridge was at the little Georgian house, shutting it up for six months.
Gertrude laughed a dry, embittered sound as she pushed the Tocsin from her. "Oh well, of course, if you're going to desert us in the worst of the fight, and to follow your guardian's lead " "But I'm not!" cried Delia, springing to her feet. "Try me. Haven't I promised a hundred things? Didn't I say all you expected me to say at Latchford?
The recollection of Winnington away in Latchford on county business smote her sharply. But how could she help it? She must must keep in touch with this man who had Gertrude in his power. While these thoughts were running through her mind, he stopped his recitation abruptly. "Am I to help you any more with the jewels?" Delia started. Lathrop was smiling at her, and she resented the smile.
She had lived for half-a-century in the same little house in one of the back-streets of Latchford, a town of some ten thousand inhabitants. Through all that time her life had been given to what is called "rescue work" though she herself rarely called it by that name. She loved those whom no one else would love the meanest and feeblest of the outcast race.
If she was a nuisance, she was at least a fairly profitable nuisance. Winnington duly arrived at luncheon. The two ladies appeared to him as usual Gertrude Marvell, self-possessed and quietly gay, ready to handle politics or books, on so light a note, that Winnington's acute recollection of her, as the haranguing fury on the Latchford waggon, began to seem absurd even to himself.
There had been no violence offered to the speakers, as in the Latchford case; the police had seen to that. Her guardian had made no appearance at either, satisfied, no doubt, after enquiry, that she was not likely to come to harm. But the evidence of public disapproval could scarcely have been more chilling more complete.
Suddenly a huge noise and hooting behind them. They drew into the hedge, to let the Latchford fire-engine thunder past, a fine new motor engine, just purchased and equipped. "There'll be three or four more directly, Miss" shouted one of her own garden lads, mounting on the step of the car. "But they say there's no hope. It was fired in three places, and there was petrol used."
Until the train ran into the long cutting half way between Latchford and Maumsey, above which climbed the steep woods of Monk Lawrence. Delia knew it well. And she had no sooner recognised it than her gaiety fell headlong like a shot bird.
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