She even suspected
them of having slept well. Yet yesterday they had been deeply stirred.
They had stayed out late last night, so late that she had not heard them
come in. Perhaps then they had passed the climax of their emotions. Sir
Richmond, she learnt, was to take the party to Exeter, where there would
be a train for Falmouth a little after two. If they started from Bath
about nine that would give them an ample margin of time in which to deal
with a puncture or any such misadventure.
They crested the Mendips above Shepton Mallet, ran through Tilchester
and Ilminster into the lovely hill country about Up-Ottery and so
to Honiton and the broad level road to Exeter. Sir Richmond and Miss
Grammont were in a state of happy gravity; they sat contentedly side by
side, talking very little. They had already made their arrangements for
writing to one another. There was to be no stream of love-letters or
protestations. That might prove a mutual torment. Their love was to be
implicit. They were to write at intervals about political matters
and their common interests, and to keep each other informed of their
movements about the world.
"We shall be working together," she said, speaking suddenly out of a
train of thought she had been following, "we shall be closer together
than many a couple who have never spent a day apart for twenty years.
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