The Truant Spirit Read Online Free

me on, the sooner you’re sent back to where you belong the better. In either case I can’t very well leave you standing in the rain on a cold winter’s night. There’s my car. Get in.”
    There was no alternative. She waited wretchedly while he opened the door of the car, noticing that he limped as he walked; then she got in without speaking, and the treacherous tears overflowed at last. If he observed that she was crying he made no comment as he got in beside her and drove away. She sat as far from him as was possible, convinced now that at her very first bid for freedom she had fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous despoiler, but he took no notice of her, and presently her tears ceased and she was conscious only of a great weariness and the forlorn hope that this was merely a continuation of her dream in the train.
    The roads were narrow and the banks high. Every so often there was a break in the banks and wild, uninhabited country seemed to lie beyond, but it was too dark to see much and rain blurred window and windscreen alike.
    Her companion spoke suddenly, making her jump.
    “I don’t take advantage of children, you know, however opportune the situation,” he said with a hint of laughter in his voice.
    She made an effort to recapture her adult dignity.
    “That relieves me,” she replied with polite gravity, “but I’m not a child. I’m nineteen.”
    “Indeed? And contemplating a marriage of convenience with—an elderly roue, I think you called him.”
    “But you didn’t believe me.”
    “Well, perhaps you haven’t made the situation very clear. Suppose you try to explain all over again. We have fifteen miles or so to drive, and it will pass the time.”
    He was only humouring her, she knew, but her fear of him had gone. With the landlord’s unpleasant company removed, perhaps she could convince him.
    She began at the beginning with Tante’s adoption of her, sketching in the confused details of her upbringing with careful exactitude.
    “It was not that they wished me to be lonely, you must understand,” she said, “but there was not much money, and Tante naturally felt cheated because the house could not be sold.”
    “The house?”
    “Yes, I own a house, but Tante discovered too late it was entailed in trust for my—my children—and of course that made things difficult for everybody.”
    He gave her a swift glance. Unless she had a very lively imagination it seemed scarcely likely that she should be inventing this detail for his edification.
    “Yes, I understand your aunt’s disillusionment,” he observed dryly. “And how does the elderly suitor come into the story?”
    “Oh, on account of the house. It really belongs in his family, and the only way he can get it back is by taking me with it, Tante says. You see, it suits all round. Tante wants to get me off her hands and have—security for her old age, and the house could be useful to him, while it’s a white elephant to us, so—it seemed the simplest way out. Don’t you agree?”
    “Very neat and tidy. There’s only one loose end. How do you know, if you’ve never met him, that your elderly roue is willing to marry a stranger, even if you are?”
    “Tante has arranged matters,” she replied. “Only yesterday she went to France to make the final arrangements.”
    “To France! Is it a French family you are about to marry into, then?”
    He spoke sharply, and she answered with apology.
    “Oh, yes. Didn’t I make that clear? I wouldn’t suppose, as you pointed out, that an Englishman would be so obliging as to marry a girl he had never met.”
    There was a long silence, and she could sense his change of mood, though whether he was still sceptical or merely disinterested she had no means of knowing.
    At last he asked: “What’s the name of this house you say you
    own?”
    “Penruthan. It’s near this village, Truan, where we are going. That was the real reason I ran away,” she added shyly. “I’ve never seen it