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This time the sounds were fainter; and they came, as she fancied, not from the spare room, as before, but from Geoffrey's room, next to it. The dinner was later than usual that day. Hester Dethridge did not appear with the tray till dusk. Anne spoke to her, and received a mute sign in answer.
An appeal to the proprieties of life, in the mouth of Geoffrey Delamayn, could only mean one of two things. Either he had spoken in brutal mockery or he had spoken with some ulterior object in view. Were there reasons, which had not yet asserted themselves, for his dreading the result, if he allowed Anne to communicate with her friends? The hour wore on, and Hester Dethridge appeared again.
Stolidly submissive to the question, as she had been stolidly submissive to the fire, Hester Dethridge wrote her reply. On all other occasions she was accustomed to look the persons to whom she offered her slate steadily in the face. Now, for the first time, she handed it to Anne with her eyes on the floor.
Hester Dethridge wrote: "She took the footpath which leads to Craig Fernie." Lady Lundie rose excitedly to her feet. There was but one place that a stranger could go to at Craig Fernie. "The inn!" exclaimed her ladyship. "She has gone to the inn!" Hester Dethridge waited immovably.
As he rose to his feet his heavy face brightened slowly with a terrible smile. While the woman's Confession was in his pocket the woman herself was in his power. "If she wants it back," he said, "she must get it on my terms." With that resolution, he opened the door, and met Hester Dethridge, face to face, in the passage.
Toward three o'clock in the afternoon in the broad sunlight, under the cloudless sky, with hundreds of innocent human creatures all around me I, Hester Dethridge, saw, for the first time, the Appearance which is appointed to haunt me for the rest of my life. "I had had a terrible night. My mind felt much as it had felt on the evening when I had gone to the play.
At the head of the stairs she hesitated not knowing what to do. Her horror of entering Geoffrey's room, by herself, was insurmountable. But who else was to do it? The girl had gone to bed. The reason which Julius had given for not employing the assistance of Hester Dethridge was unanswerable. She listened again at Geoffrey's door.
AT a few minutes before six o'clock that evening, Lord Holchester's carriage brought Geoffrey and Anne back to the cottage. Geoffrey prevented the servant from ringing at the gate. He had taken the key with him, when he left home earlier in the day. Having admitted Anne, and having closed the gate again, he went on before her to the kitchen window, and called to Hester Dethridge.
After waiting for a moment, he was joined by Hester Dethridge. "Done?" he asked, in a whisper. Hester made the affirmative sign. Geoffrey took off his boots and led the way into the spare room. They noiselessly moved the bed back to its place against the partition wall and left the room again.
Hester Dethridge wrote on her slate: "Miss Blanche." Lady Lundie stepped back, staggered by the discovery that Blanche's resolution to trace Anne Silvester was, to all appearance, as firmly settled as her own. Her step-daughter was keeping her own counsel, and acting on her own responsibility her step-daughter might be an awkward obstacle in the way.
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