“A telegram for you, sir,” said one of the clerks to Laurence Wynne, the following morning. Telegrams were a common arrival; but instinctively he felt that there was something unusual about this one, as he tore it open and glanced over it.
“My father is dangerously ill. Impossible to fulfil promise. Writing.”
“I knew it,” he said, as he crumpled the paper in his hand, then smoothed it and read it over again. “No,” to the clerk, who had a bet on an imminent big race, and had gathered alarm from Mr. Wynne’s expression; “no, Stevens; there is no answer.”
“Mr. West had come in and gone to bed,” so Miss West was impressively informed by the butler. Yes, he had inquired for her, and he had told him that, to the best of his belief, she was spending the evening with Lady Rachel.
Madeline breathed again freely, and hurried up to her own room, almost afraid of encountering her fussy and inquisitive parent on the stairs, and being rigidly questioned then and there.
But Mr. West had not been feeling well, and complained of his chest and breathing, and had gone straight to bed, so said Josephine. Consequently there was no chance of his loitering about in passages, awaiting her, and catching cold.
Madeline sat over her fire, for a long time, wondering how she could bring herself to tell him, and what would be the result of her great piece of news. It must be told—and told to-morrow; Laurence was evidently serious. She had not known till now that Laurence could be hard, stern, and immovable. Well—well—she wished the ordeal was over, and well over; this time to-morrow it would be a thing of the past.
“Perhaps, nay, most likely,” she said to herself half-aloud, “this is the very last time I shall sit at this fire; the last time I shall have a maid to lay out my things and brush my hair. Heigho! I wish—no—no—I don’t wish I had not married Laurence, but there is no harm in wishing that he was rich!”
Madeline’s terror of her inevitable interview kept her awake for hours; her heart beat so loudly, that it would not suffer her to sleep, and it was really morning when she fell into a troubled doze, from which she was aroused by Josephine with an unusually long face, and no morning tea in her hand.