“You’ve led me a nice dance on a wrong scent,” answered the runner, sulkily.  “But I never was a hard man where women are concerned.  Go upstairs, and leave the door open, so that I can see in through it if I like.  Hold your hat over your wrists, if you don’t want her to see the handcuffs.”

I ascended the first flight of stairs, and my heart gave a sudden bound as if it would burst.  I stopped, speechless and helpless, at the sight of Alicia, standing alone on the landing.  My first look at her face told me she had heard all that had passed in the passage.  She passionately struck the hat with which I had been trying to hide the handcuffs out of my fingers, and clasped me in her arms with such sudden and desperate energy that she absolutely hurt me.

“I was afraid of something, Frank,” she whispered.  “I followed you a little way.  I stopped here; I have heard everything.  Don’t let us be parted!  I am stronger than you think me.  I won’t be frightened.  I won’t cry.  I won’t trouble anybody, if that man will only take me with you!”

It is best for my sake, if not for the reader’s, to hurry over the scene that followed.

It ended with as little additional wretchedness as could be expected.  The runner was resolute about keeping me handcuffed, and taking me back, without a moment’s unnecessary waste of time to Barkingham; but he relented on other points.

Where he was obliged to order a private conveyance, there was no objection to Alicia and Mrs. Baggs following it.  Where we got into a coach, there was no harm in their hiring two inside places.  I gave my watch, rings, and last guinea to Alicia, enjoining her, on no account, to let her box of jewels see the light until we could get proper advice on the best means of turning them to account.  She listened to these and other directions with a calmness that astonished me.

“You shan’t say, my dear, that your wife has helped to make you uneasy by so much as a word or a look,” she whispered to me as we left the inn.

And she kept the hard promise implied in that one short sentence throughout the journey.  Once only did I see her lose her self-possession.  At starting on our way south, Mrs. Baggs—­taking the same incomprehensible personal offense at my misfortune which she had previously taken at the doctor’s—­upbraided me with my want of confidence in her, and declared that it was the main cause of all my present trouble.  Alicia turned on her as she was uttering the words, with a look and a warning that silenced her in an instant: 

“If you say another syllable that isn’t kind to him, you shall find your way back by yourself!”

The words may not seem of much importance to others; but I thought, as I overheard them, that they justified every sacrifice I had made for my wife’s sake.

CHAPTER XVI.

ON our way back I received from the runner some explanation of his apparently unaccountable proceedings in reference to myself.