“You can tell Gavinia the truth when I am gone,” she told him.  “She will know better than you what to say to other people.”  And that was some comfort to him, for it put the burden of invention upon his wife.  So it was Corp who saw Grizel off.  He was in great distress himself about Tommy, but he kept a courageous face for her, and his last words flung in at the carriage window were, “Now dinna be down-hearted; I’m nain down-hearted mysel’, for we’re very sure he’ll find a wy.”  And Grizel smiled and nodded, and the train turned the bend that shuts out the little town of Thrums.  The town vanishes quickly, but the quarry we howked it out of stands grim and red, watching the train for many a mile.

Of Grizel’s journey to London there are no particulars to tell.  She was wearing her brown jacket and fur cap because Tommy had liked them, and she sat straight and stiff all the way.  She had never been in a train since she was a baby, except two or three times to Tilliedrum, and she thought this was the right way to sit.  Always, when the train stopped, which was at long intervals, she put her head out at the window and asked if this was the train to London.  Every station a train stops at in the middle of the night is the infernal regions, and she shuddered to hear lost souls clanking their chains, which is what a milk-can becomes on its way to the van; but still she asked if this was the train to London.  When fellow-passengers addressed her, she was very modest and cautious in her replies.  Sometimes a look of extraordinary happiness, of radiance, passed over her face, and may have puzzled them.  It was part of the thought that, however ill he might be, she was to see him now.

She did not see him as soon as she expected, for at the door of Tommy’s lodgings they told her that he had departed suddenly for the Continent about a week ago.  He was to send an address by and by to which letters could be forwarded.  Was he quite well when he went away?  Grizel asked, shaking.

The landlady and her daughter thought he was rather peakish, but he had not complained.

He went away for his health, Grizel informed them, and he was very ill now.  Oh, could they not tell her where he was?  All she knew was that he was very ill.  “I am engaged to be married to him,” she said with dignity.  Without this strange certainty that Tommy loved her at last, she could not have trod the road which faced her now.  Even when she had left the house, where at their suggestion she was to call to-morrow, she found herself wondering at once what he would like her to do now, and she went straight to a hotel, and had her box sent to it from the station, and she remained there all day because she thought that this was what he would like her to do.  She sat bolt upright on a cane chair in her bedroom, praying to God with her eyes open; she was begging Him to let Tommy tell her where he was, and promising to return home at once if he did not need her.