She looked at the time-table; there was no train that would help her. If she wanted to get to Liverpool before the _Secondee_ sailed, it must be by car. So once more she sat herself in the seat of government....
The road held through Lancaster to Preston, and outside towns and villages she crashed along often at a fifty-mile gait in her fear at being too late. And then came the black cotton towns of Lancashire with their slatternly women and shrill-voiced children scrambling over the streets. She had to slow to a crawl through these, and even then the tires skated dangerously over the greasy streets. But speed triumphed over time and distance in the end. She swung at a rattling gait into a Liverpool suburb, and for the third time had her number taken by an indignant policeman, and thereafter slowed to a dignified crawl. She glanced at her watch. With care now, and if no mishap blocked her progress, she would be on the landing stage before the mail-boat threw off her ropes.
Luck and good nerve aided her bravely now. She wormed her way rapidly through the increasing traffic of the Liverpool streets, and came to the landing stage entrance.
She patted her car and gave it a word of gratitude. A cabman took charge, and with him also she left motor veils, coat and gloves, and walked down onto the landing stage fully conscious of neat hair, a perfect frock, and the Paris hat. Carter was standing gloomily at the bookstall, with a chin that looked more dogged and hair that was redder than ever.
"Ah," she said lightly, "fancy meeting you here. Weren't you going by last week's boat?"
"You had no cable from Las Palmas during the last two days?"
"No. Have you? What are you driving at?" There was something so pathetic in his brown eyes that she had not the heart to drag out her explanation any further. She pulled a letter from her pocket, marked a place with her thumb and showed it to him.
He put a heavy hand down on the bookstall and stirred the papers into little heaps. "My God! Laura married. Married! Let me think what this means!"
A very indignant bookstall keeper began to make remarks, but Kate said, "Thank you. Those are the ones I want. Please tie them up for me. Here's a sovereign." And then she put a hand on Carter's arm and led him outside the crowd.