“Do not sit up for me,” she said to Nina, “I will telegraph to you in the morning.”
She stepped into the carriage, the door was banged fast, and the next moment the horse plunged away under the stinging lash of the whip. Almost at the same instant Lady Elaine felt that she was not alone, and a terrible dread seized upon her. What did it mean? Against the purple darkness of the night, through one of the windows, she had clearly seen a man’s profile! Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the blackness about her, his form was apparent like a misty shadow.
A cold chill seemed to rest upon her heart, but, by a desperate effort, she spoke:
“Can you tell me if Sir Harold’s condition is as hopeless as the physician appears to think in the note he has sent to me?”
She waited, but there was no reply. The strain was too awful to bear. She uttered a wild shriek, and a hand was clapped to her mouth, while a sinewy arm clasped her waist. She gasped for breath, and then relapsed into insensibility under the powerful fumes of something pressed to her palpitating nostrils.
The man pulled the checkstring, and the carriage stopped.
“It’s all right, Bulger,” said the voice of Viscount Rivington. “Drive carefully now, so that we do not attract any needless attention. Straight to Sim’s alley, King’s Cross.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MARGARET’S ATONEMENT.
Like a man bereft of all reason, Sir Harold Annesley paced his wife’s room, the words of her last letter seeming to eat into his brain like molten fire.