"Then wait till I get two or three things. This is my lodging.
Sometimes when late I sleep at the hotel where I am engaged, so
nobody will think anything of my staying out."
She speedily returned, and they went on to the railway, and made the
half-hour's journey to Aldbrickham, where they entered a third-rate
inn near the station in time for a late supper.
IX
On the morrow between nine and half-past they were journeying back
to Christminster, the only two occupants of a compartment in a
third-class railway-carriage. Having, like Jude, made rather a
hasty toilet to catch the train, Arabella looked a little frowsy,
and her face was very far from possessing the animation which had
characterized it at the bar the night before. When they came out of
the station she found that she still had half an hour to spare before
she was due at the bar. They walked in silence a little way out of
the town in the direction of Alfredston. Jude looked up the far
highway.
"Ah ... poor feeble me!" he murmured at last.
"What?" said she.
"This is the very road by which I came into Christminster years ago
full of plans!"
"Well, whatever the road is I think my time is nearly up, as I have
to be in the bar by eleven o'clock. And as I said, I shan't ask for
the day to go with you to see your aunt. So perhaps we had better
part here. I'd sooner not walk up Chief Street with you, since we've
come to no conclusion at all."
"Very well. But you said when we were getting up this morning that
you had something you wished to tell me before I left?"
"So I had--two things--one in particular. But you wouldn't promise
to keep it a secret. I'll tell you now if you promise? As an honest
woman I wish you to know it... It was what I began telling you
in the night--about that gentleman who managed the Sydney hotel."
Arabella spoke somewhat hurriedly for her. "You'll keep it close?"
"Yes--yes--I promise!" said Jude impatiently. "Of course I don't
want to reveal your secrets."
"Whenever I met him out for a walk, he used to say that he was much
taken with my looks, and he kept pressing me to marry him. I never
thought of coming back to England again; and being out there in
Australia, with no home of my own after leaving my father, I at last
agreed, and did."