The bar had been crowded with men of all sorts during the previous
hour, and he had heard from without the hubbub of their voices; but
the customers were fewer at last. He nodded to Arabella, and told
her that she would find him outside the door when she came away.
"But you must have something with me first," she said with great
good humour. "Just an early night-cap: I always do. Then you can
go out and wait a minute, as it is best we should not be seen going
together." She drew a couple of liqueur glasses of brandy; and
though she had evidently, from her countenance, already taken in
enough alcohol either by drinking or, more probably, from the
atmosphere she had breathed for so many hours, she finished hers
quickly. He also drank his, and went outside the house.
In a few minutes she came, in a thick jacket and a hat with a black
feather. "I live quite near," she said, taking his arm, "and can let
myself in by a latch-key at any time. What arrangement do you want
to come to?"
"Oh--none in particular," he answered, thoroughly sick and tired, his
thoughts again reverting to Alfredston, and the train he did not go
by; the probable disappointment of Sue that he was not there when
she arrived, and the missed pleasure of her company on the long and
lonely climb by starlight up the hills to Marygreen. "I ought to
have gone back really! My aunt is on her deathbed, I fear."
"I'll go over with you to-morrow morning. I think I could get a day
off."
There was something particularly uncongenial in the idea of Arabella,
who had no more sympathy than a tigress with his relations or him,
coming to the bedside of his dying aunt, and meeting Sue. Yet he
said, "Of course, if you'd like to, you can."
"Well, that we'll consider... Now, until we have come to some
agreement it is awkward our being together here--where you are known,
and I am getting known, though without any suspicion that I have
anything to do with you. As we are going towards the station,
suppose we take the nine-forty train to Aldbrickham? We shall be
there in little more than half an hour, and nobody will know us for
one night, and we shall be quite free to act as we choose till we
have made up our minds whether we'll make anything public or not."
"As you like."