As to the rest of the business, there was a station on the Keswick line close to the gate of the park, and she had looked out a train which would take her conveniently to Whitebeck, which was only half a mile from Threlfall.  From Duddon to Whitebeck took eight minutes in the train.  She would be at Whitebeck a little after five; allowing an hour for her adventure at the Tower, and some little margin, she would catch a train back between six and seven, which would allow of her slipping into Duddon a little after seven, unnoticed, and in good time to dress for dinner.  Her Italian blood betrayed itself throughout, alike in the keen pleasure she took in the various devices of her small plot; in the entire absence of any hampering scruples as to the disobedience and deceit which it involved; and in the practical intelligence with which she was ready to carry it out.  She had brooded over it for days; and this afternoon a convenient opportunity had arisen.  Her mother was in her room with a headache; Lady Tatham had had to go to Carlisle on business.

As she hastened, almost running, through the park, she was planning, by fits and starts, what she would say to her father.  But still more was the thinking of Tatham—­asking herself questions about him, with little thrills of excitement, and little throbbings of delicious fear.

Here she was, at the gate of the park.  Just ten minutes to her train!  She hurried on.  A few labourers were in the road coming home tired from their work; a few cottage doors were ajar, showing the bright fire, and the sprawling children within.  Some of the men as they passed looked with curiosity at the slim stranger; but she was well muffled up in her new furs—­Victoria’s gift—­and her large felt hat; they saw little more than the tips of her small nose and chin.

The train came in just as she reached the station.  She took her ticket for Whitebeck, and as the train jogged along, she looked out of the window at the valley in the dim moonrise, her mind working tumultuously.  Lady Tatham had told her much; Hesketh, Lady Tatham’s maid, and the old coachman who had been teaching her to ride, had told her more.  She knew that before she reached Whitebeck she would have passed the boundary between the Duddon and Threlfall estates.  She was now indeed on her father’s land, the land which in justice ought to be hers some day; which in Italy would be hers by law, or part of it anyway, whatever pranks her father might play.  But here in England a man might rob his child of every penny if he pleased.  That was strange when England was such a great country—­such a splendid country.  “I love England!” she thought passionately, as she leant back with folded arms and closed eyes.