“Oh, yes, I will go to sleep,” Katharine said. She reflected again that she was of commoner clay than Thompson, who could not have closed an eye.
It proved not at all difficult to find out everything, or almost everything, about the runaway pair. The doctor’s mission, though it seemed likely to be the most important of all, did not produce very much. In the bustle of the embarkation he had found it difficult to get any information at all, but eventually he had found Captain Scott, whom he had attended during his illness, and whom he now sent peremptorily down below out of the cold. “If that’s your duty, you must not do it, that’s all,” he had said with the decision of a medical man, though whether he had secured his point or not, Katherine, ungratefully indifferent to Algy, did not ascertain. But he found that Sir Charles Somers had got leave and was going out with a P. and O. from Brindisi to join his regiment when it should reach India.
“It will cost him the eyes out of his head,” Algy said. “Lucky beggar, he don’t mind what he spends now.”
“Why?” the doctor asked, and was laughed at for not knowing that Charlie had run off with old Tredgold’s daughter, who was good for any amount of money, and, of course, would soon give in and receive the pair back again into favour. “Are you so sure of that?” the doctor said. And Algy had replied that his friend would be awfully up a tree if it didn’t turn out so. The doctor shook his head in relating this story to Katherine. “I have my doubts,” he said; but she knew nothing on that subject, and was thinking of nothing but of Stella herself, and the dreadful thought that she might see her no more.
The vicar, on his side, had been busy with his inquiries too, and he had found out everything with the greatest ease; in the first place from Andrews, the young coachman, who declared that he had always taken his orders from Miss Stella, and didn’t know as he was doing no wrong. Andrews admitted very frankly that he had driven his young mistress to the little church, one of the very small primitive churches of the island near Steephill, where the tall gentleman with the dark moustaches had met her, and where Miss Stevens had turned up with a big basketful of white chrysanthemums. They had been in the church about half an hour, and then they had come out again, and Miss Stevens and the young lady had got into the brougham. The chrysanthemums had been for the decoration of the ballroom, as everybody knew. Then he had taken Miss Stevens to meet the last train for Ryde; and finally he had driven his young ladies home with a gentleman on the box that had got down at the gate, but whether he came any further or not Andrews did not know. The vicar had gone on in search of information to Steephill Church, and found that the old rector there, in the absence of the curate--he himself being almost past duty by reason of old age--had married one of the gentlemen living at the Castle to a young lady whose name he could not recollect further than that it was Stella. The old gentleman had thought it all right as it was a gentleman from the Castle, and he had a special licence, which made everything straight. The register of the marriage was all right in the books, as the vicar had taken care to see. Of course it was all right in the books! Katherine was much surprised that they should all make such a point of that, as if anything else was to be thought of. What did it matter about the register? The thing was that Stella had run away, that she was gone, that she had betrayed their trust in her, and been a traitor to her home.