Pimpernel and Rosemary

For over half an hour Rosemary waited in that bare, cheerless room, and gazed unseeing out of the window while she tried vainly to co-ordinate her thoughts. In the forefront of her mind there was a feeling of great joy which she hardly dared to analyse. Joy! And she also had the feeling, though she had come to the very brink of an awful precipice, though she was looking down into an abyss of shame and horror, with no hope of ever being able to bridge the chasm over, that yet on the other side was peace—peace that she would never attain, but which was there nevertheless, to dwell on, to dream of, when the turmoil was past and she be allowed to rest.

After about half an hour the young officer who had first conducted her to the fateful spot came back to see what had happened. He seemed astonished that she was still there.

"Major Buriecha has not yet come out of his room," Rosemary managed to say quite coolly. "It is getting near dinner-time. I don't think I'll wait any longer."

The young man appeared relieved. Anyway he was not likely now to get into trouble on the English lady's account. He clicked his heels together, expressed perfunctory regret at her disappointment, the offered to conduct milady out of the château. Rosemary accepted his escort and took leave of him at the gates.

"If milady, will write to the commanding officer," Lieutenant Uriesu said at the end, "I am sure he will give the permit milady requires."

"I will certainly take your advice," Rosemary assented cheerfully. "Good-bye, Lieutenant Uriesu, and thank you for your kind efforts on my behalf."

She walked back towards the village by way of the path. When she came to the spot where first she had seen Peter that morning, she sat down on the tree-stump and listened to the murmur of the stream. She would not allow herself to think of Peter—only of Philip and Anna, whom he was taking across the frontier by another clever trick—in disguise, probably—and over the mountain passes. Rosemary could not believe that they would stick to the car and be stopped by the frontier police. They would get away into Hungary-on foot. They were young, they knew the country, and they could scramble over the mountain passes and be at Hódmezö soon, where Elza would be waiting for them. Elza knew, of course, and Maurus knew too. That was why he had been so calm and so composed when he was told that he must leave Kis-Imre within four-and-twenty hours. The all knew. Peter had trusted them. Only she, Rosemary, had been kept out of his councils, because she might have betrayed them to Jasper, and Peter could not tell her that it was Jasper who was the miserable spy.

But no, she would not think of Peter, or of how he had worked to circumvent Jasper at every turn. She only wanted to think of Philip and Anna, those two children who were so ingenuously learning the lesson of love one from the other, and of Elza, so patient and so heroic, and of Maurus, who had played his part so well. Maurus would be coming through from Cluj some time to-day, and he, too, would be held up at Sót, and perhaps spend the night in the funny little hotel. Rosemary hoped that she would see him. His company would be very welcome whilst Jasper was still there. Then to-morrow she and Maurus would get across the frontier somehow, and join up with Elza and the children at Hódmezö. And there was always the British Consul in Cluj to appeal to. There was no desperate hurry now. The children were safe and those articles of hers would not be published in The Times. Peter would have seen to that.

But no, she did not want to think of Peter. Was she not still Jasper Tarkington's wife?

CHAPTER XLV