d
be to join his son in London, without attracting suspicion to himself by
openly neglecting the interests placed under his charge.

Toward the Tuesday afternoon, vague rumors of something wrong at
the cottage found their way (through Major Milroy's servants) to the
servants at the great house, and attempted ineffectually through this
latter channel to engage the attention of Mr. Bashwood, impenetrably
fixed on other things. The major and Miss Neelie had been shut up
together in mysterious conference; and Miss Neelie's appearance after
the close of the interview plainly showed that she had been crying. This
had happened on the Monday afternoon; and on the next day (that present
Tuesday) the major had startled the household by announcing briefly
that his daughter wanted a change to the air of the seaside, and that
he proposed taking her himself, by the next train, to Lowestoft. The
two had gone away together, both very serious and silent, but both,
apparently, very good friends, for all that. Opinions at the great
house attributed this domestic revolution to the reports current on the
subject of Allan and Miss Gwilt. Opinions at the cottage rejected
that solution of the difficulty, on practical grounds. Miss Neelie had
remained inaccessibly shut up in her own room, from the Monday afternoon
to the Tuesday morning when her father took her away. The major, during
the same interval, had not been outside the door, and had spoken to
nobody And Mrs. Milroy, at the first attempt of her new attendant
to inform her of the prevailing scandal in the town, had sealed the
servant's lips by flying into one of her terrible passions the instant
Miss Gwilt's name was mentioned. Something must have happened, of
course, to take Major Milroy and his daughter so suddenly from home; but
that something was certainly not Mr. Armadale's scandalous elopement, in
broad daylight, with Miss Gwilt.

The afternoon passed, and the evening passed, and no other event
happened but the purely private and personal event which had taken place
at the cottage. Nothing occurred (for nothing in the nature of things
_could_ occur) to dissipate the delusion on which Miss Gwilt had
counted--the delusion which all Thorpe Ambrose now shared with Mr.
Bashwood, that she had gone privately to London with Allan in the
character of Allan's future wife.

On the Wednesday morning, the postman, entering the street in which Mr.
Bashwood lived, was encountered by Mr. Bashwo