"I have gone. As you love me, don't let him follow me. I am heart-broken:—Ora."
Thus ran the note which Ashley read. At the last moment, then, the great drama had broken down, renunciation and reformation had refused to run in couples, the fine scenes would not be played and—the heroine had fled from the theatre! An agreement was an agreement, as Mr. Hazlewood insisted; but Ora had broken hers. Here was Ashley Mead with a stray husband on his hands! He laughed again as he re-read the note. Where had she gone, poor dear, she and her broken heart? She was crying somewhere with the picturesqueness that she could impart even to the violent forms of grief. His laugh made friends with a groan as he looked down on the flabby figure of Jack Fenning. That such a creature should make such a coil! The world is oddly ordered.
"What the devil are we to do now?" he exclaimed aloud, glancing from the note to Jack, and back from Jack to the note. The note gave no help; Jack's bewildered questioning eyes were equally useless. "She's gone," Ashley explained with a short laugh.
"Gone? Where to?" Helplessness still, not indignation, not even surprise, marked the tone.
"I don't know. You're not to follow her, she says."
Jack seemed to sink into a smaller size as he muttered forlornly,
"She told me to come, you know." His uninjured hand moved longingly but indecisively towards his bag. "Will you have a dram?" he asked.
"No, I won't," said Ashley. "Well, we can't stay here all night. What are you going to do?"
"I don't understand what you mean by saying she's gone," moaned Jack.
"It's all she says—and that you're not to follow. What are you going to do?"