d to prepare for a start at an early hour the next
morning. Mrs. Pagnell wrote at her desk, and fussed, and ordered the
posting chariot, and bewailed herself submissively; for it was the
Countess of Ormont speaking when Aminta delivered commands, and the
only grievance she dared to mutter was 'the unexpectedness.' Her letters
having been despatched, she was amazed in the late evening to hear
Aminta give the footman orders for the chariot to be ready at the door
an hour earlier than the hour previously appointed. She remonstrated.
Aminta simply observed that it would cause less inconvenience to all
parties. A suspicion of her aunt's proceedings was confirmed by the good
woman's flustered state. She refrained from smiling.

She would have mustered courage to invite Matthew Weyburn as her
escort, if he had been at hand. He was attending to his affairs with
lawyers--mainly with his friend Mr. Abner. She studied map and gazetteer
till late into the night. Giving her orders to the postillion on the
pavement in the morning, she named a South-westerly direction out of
London, and after entering the chariot, she received a case from one of
the footmen.

'What is that, my dear?' said Mrs. Pagnell.

Aminta unlocked and laid it open. A pair of pistols met Mrs. Pagnell's
gaze.

'We shan't be in need of those things?' the lady said anxiously.

'One never knows, on the road, aunt.'

'Loaded? You wouldn't hesitate to fire; I'm sure.'

'At Mr. Morsfield himself, if he attempted to stop me.'

Mrs. Pagnell withdrew into her astonishment, and presently asked, in a
tone of some indignation: 'Why did you mention Mr. Morsfield, Aminta?'

'Did you not write to him yesterday afternoon, aunt?'

'You read the addresses on my letters!'

'Did you not supply him with our proposed route and the time for
starting?'

'Pistols!' exclaimed Mrs. Pagnell. 'One would fancy you think we are
in the middle of the last century. Mr. Morsfield is a gentleman, not a
highwayman.'

'He gives the impression of his being a madman.'

'The real madman is your wedded husband, Aminta, if wedding it was!'

It was too surely so, in Aminta's mind. She tried, by looking out of the
window, to forget her companion. The dullness of the roads and streets
opening away to flat fields combined with the postillion's unvarying jog
to sicken her thoughts over the exile from London she was undergoing,
and the chance that Matthew Weyburn might call at a vacant house nex