He returned; he entered the carriage, and the wheels were soon in motion.  Immediately thereupon, Flitch’s fly drove past, containing Colonel De Craye.

Vernon could not but have perceived him!

But what was it that had brought the colonel to this place?  The pressure of Vernon’s mind was on her and foiled her efforts to assert her perfect innocence, though she knew she had done nothing to allure the colonel hither.  Excepting Willoughby, Colonel De Craye was the last person she would have wished to encounter.

She had now a dread of hearing the bell which would tell her that Vernon had not deceived her, and that she was out of his hands, in the hands of some one else.

She bit at her glove; she glanced at the concentrated eyes of the publican’s family portraits, all looking as one; she noticed the empty tumbler, and went round to it and touched it, and the silly spoon in it.

A little yielding to desperation shoots us to strange distances!

Vernon had asked her whether she was alone.  Connecting that inquiry, singular in itself, and singular in his manner of putting it, with the glass of burning liquid, she repeated:  “He must have seen Colonel De Craye!” and she stared at the empty glass, as at something that witnessed to something:  for Vernon was not your supple cavalier assiduously on the smirk to pin a gallantry to commonplaces.  But all the doors are not open in a young lady’s consciousness, quick of nature though she may be:  some are locked and keyless, some will not open to the key, some are defended by ghosts inside.  She could not have said what the something witnessed to.  If we by chance know more, we have still no right to make it more prominent than it was with her.  And the smell of the glass was odious; it disgraced her.  She had an impulse to pocket the spoon for a memento, to show it to grandchildren for a warning.  Even the prelude to the morality to be uttered on the occasion sprang to her lips:  “Here, my dears, is a spoon you would be ashamed to use in your teacups, yet it was of more value to me at one period of my life than silver and gold in pointing out, etc.”:  the conclusion was hazy, like the conception; she had her idea.

And in this mood she ran down-stairs and met Colonel De Craye on the station steps.

The bright illumination of his face was that of the confident man confirmed in a risky guess in the crisis of doubt and dispute.

“Miss Middleton!” his joyful surprise predominated; the pride of an accurate forecast, adding:  “I am not too late to be of service?”

She thanked him for the offer.

“Have you dismissed the fly, Colonel De Craye?”

“I have just been getting change to pay Mr. Flitch.  He passed me on the road.  He is interwound with our fates to a certainty.  I had only to jump in; I knew it, and rolled along like a magician commanding a genie.”

“Have I been . . .”