"I mean that after they are gone only one obstacle intervenes between you and all the Essendine wealth. If Lord Lydstone were out of the way, the title and its possession would come, perhaps, to your husband, certainly to your son."
"Silence! Do not put thoughts into my head. You must be the very fiend, I think."
"I know you, Cyprienne, and every move of your mind. We are such old friends, you see," he said, with a sneering, cynical smile. "And now, as before, I offer you my help."
"Devil! Do not tempt me!"
He laughed—a cold, cruel, truculent laugh.
"I know you, I repeat, and am ready to serve you as before. Come, or send, if you want me. I am living here in this hotel; Mr. Hobson they call me—Mr. Joseph Hobson, of London. My number is 73. Shall I hear from you?"
"No, no! I will not listen to you. Let me go!" And Mrs. Wilders, breaking away from him, hurried down the street.
It was not a long walk to the waterside. There she took a caique, or local boat, with two rowers in red fezzes, and was conveyed across the Bosphorus to the Asiatic side.
Landing at Scutari, Mrs. Wilders went straight to the great palace, which was now a hospital, and treading its long passages with the facility of one who had travelled the road before, she presently found herself in a spacious, lofty chamber filled with truckle-beds, and converted now into a hospital-ward.
"How is he?" she asked, going up at once to a sergeant who acted as superintendent and head nurse.