She would be sure to leave the old woman’s cottage by nine. He counted on that. He wanted to see her, he wanted to see how she had taken what her grandmother would say to her, he wanted to know that Betty would realise how sensible the arrangement was and how it would be for her own good and happiness in the long run. She was young, a mere child, in some far away little village she would begin a new life, unmolested by Abram Lestwick, the terror of his presence and his pretensions removed for ever from her mind. And far away amid new surroundings, she would surely forget in time—perhaps not at once—yet in time, all those strange happenings and that strange tie that had drawn Betty and himself so closely together.
Allan was not vain, he did not for one moment believe that it was his own personality that had attracted Betty, or that he himself—the man he was now, had ever awakened any feelings of tenderness and love in that little heart.
It was the glamour, the strange mystery, the unsolvable mystery, those visions that she—and he too—had seen, that dimly uncertain memory of ’something’ that had been, in the buried and unknown past; it was that that had appealed to her as of course it had appealed to him.
So Allan lighted his pipe and strolled away down the dusky road and strangely enough had not gone ten paces before he was thinking of Kathleen, rather than of her he had come to meet.
Mrs. Hanson sat upright on her stiff old chair, her hands were folded primly on her narrow lap, her eyes were fixed in an unwavering stare on the closed door.
She was expecting Betty, she had been expecting the girl for the past hour. For an hour Mrs. Hanson had sat there listening for coming footsteps but hearing only the steady persistent ’tick-tock’ of the long cased clock.
During that hour Mrs. Hanson had been thinking, she had been asking of herself questions, and as the minutes passed the stern old face grew graver and grimmer.
Why should he be willing to give to Betty and herself such a mort of money. Why should he be wishful of sending Betty to some far off place. Why should Mr. Allan Homewood interest himself in the very least with the future of Betty Hanson at all?
Questions that Mrs. Hanson could not answer satisfactorily.