'Then appearances will speak falsely; and how can that matter, even if they do? I shall be your husband sooner or later, for certain, and so prove your purity.'
'Stephen, once in London I ought to have married you,' she said firmly. 'It was my only safe defence. I see more things now than I did yesterday. My only remaining chance is not to be discovered; and that we must fight for most desperately.'
They stepped out. Elfride pulled a thick veil over her face.
A woman with red and scaly eyelids and glistening eyes was sitting on a bench just inside the office-door. She fixed her eyes upon Elfride with an expression whose force it was impossible to doubt, but the meaning of which was not clear; then upon the carriage they had left. She seemed to read a sinister story in the scene.
Elfride shrank back, and turned the other way.
'Who is that woman?' said Stephen. 'She looked hard at you.'
'Mrs. Jethway--a widow, and mother of that young man whose tomb we sat on the other night. Stephen, she is my enemy. Would that God had had mercy enough upon me to have hidden this from HER!'
'Do not talk so hopelessly,' he remonstrated. 'I don't think she recognized us.'
'I pray that she did not.'
He put on a more vigorous mood.
'Now, we will go and get some breakfast.'
'No, no!' she begged. 'I cannot eat. I MUST get back to Endelstow.'
Elfride was as if she had grown years older than Stephen now.
'But you have had nothing since last night but that cup of tea at Bristol.'
'I can't eat, Stephen.'
'Wine and biscuit?'
'No.'
'Nor tea, nor coffee?'
'No.'
'A glass of water?'
'No. I want something that makes people strong and energetic for the present, that borrows the strength of to-morrow for use to-day--leaving to-morrow without any at all for that matter; or even that would take all life away to-morrow, so long as it enabled me to get home again now. Brandy, that's what I want. That woman's eyes have eaten my heart away!'
'You are wild; and you grieve me, darling. Must it be brandy?'
'Yes, if you please.'
'How much?'
'I don't know. I have never drunk more than a teaspoonful at once. All I know is that I want it. Don't get it at the Falcon.'
He left her in the fields, and went to the nearest inn in that direction. Presently he returned with a small flask nearly full, and some slices of bread-and-butter, thin as wafers, in a paper-bag. Elfride took a sip or two.