She could not tell him, for it was a compact she had made with one who did not sign it.  “I shall cease to be bitter and despairing and wicked, and try every moment of my life to be good and do good, so long as my plant flourishes; but if it withers, then I shall go to him—­I don’t care what happens; I shall go to him.”

It was the middle of June when she first noticed that the plant was beginning to droop.

CHAPTER XXVII

GRIZEL’S JOURNEY

Nothing could have been less expected.  In the beginning of May its leaves had lost something of their greenness.  The plant seemed to be hesitating, but she coaxed it over the hill, and since then it had scarcely needed her hand; almost light-headedly it hurried into its summer clothes, and new buds broke out on it, like smiles, at the fascinating thought that there was to be a to-morrow.  Grizel’s plant had never been so brave in its little life when suddenly it turned back.

That was the day on which Elspeth and David were leaving for a fortnight’s holiday with his relatives by the sea; for Elspeth needed and was getting special devotion just now, and Grizel knew why.  She was glad they were going; it was well that they should not be there to ask questions if she also must set forth on a journey.

For more than a week she waited, and everything she could do for her plant she did.  She watched it so carefully that she might have deceived herself into believing that it was standing still only, had there been no night-time.  She thought she had not perhaps been sufficiently good, and she tried to be more ostentatiously satisfied with her lot.  Never had she forced herself to work quite so hard for others as in those few days, and then when she came home it had drooped a little more.

When she was quite sure that it was dying, she told Corp she was going to London by that night’s train.  “He is ill, Corp, and I must go to him.”

Ill!  But how had he let her know?

“He has found a way,” she said, with a tremulous smile.  He wanted her to telegraph; but no, she would place no faith in telegrams.

At least she could telegraph to Elspeth and the doctor.  One of them would go.

“It is I who am going,” she said quietly.  “I can’t wait any longer.  It was a promise, Corp.  He loves me.”  They were the only words she said which suggest that there was anything strange about Grizel at this time.

Corp saw how determined she was when she revealed, incidentally, that she had drawn a sum of money out of the bank a week ago, “to be ready.”

“What will folk say!” he cried.