"I am going out, my dear, and will call back in an hour with a cab. You needn't unpack the things, we'll take them with us."
For fully ten minutes after Edward's departure Charlotte sat in thought before the fire, and then rose to take a look round the house before leaving it. It was strange for this woman to be thus doing the bidding of a man for whom she had hitherto had such scant respect. The change that opportunity had worked in her husband would not have been welcome to her but for the promise of better times that his words and actions suggested. She could not but look forward to the suite at Abbot's, the hotel in Bloomsbury at which they had dined two or three times during their married life.
As she walked slowly from room to room she found herself picturing the glories that were to be hers, the lofty dining-room with its pillars of marble and the windows with the long red curtains. Then her thoughts ran to the five weekly pounds that were to be hers also, and she wondered if Edward meant her to pay for the suite out of them.
She dressed herself in the best that her wardrobe afforded and gathered together a few personal belongings into a small hand-bag, which, together with the trunk and portmanteau they had that morning brought from Bushey, she placed in the hall to await her husband's return. It was four o'clock when Edward softly closed the front door of No. 8, Belitha Villas, and with Charlotte and the luggage clattered away in the decrepit old four-wheeler which he had fetched from the rank.
As they turned the corner, Edward, who had been idly gazing from the window, drew back sharply into the shadows of the vehicle. He signalled the driver to stop, and getting out, walked carefully back to the corner, where, with his eyes, he followed the movements of two men who were looking up at the numbers of the houses. They paused at No. 8, and pushing open the gate marched up to the door. Edward saw one of them knock, then he hurried back to the cab.
"Just in time—I thought so," he muttered.
He then told the cabman to drive to King's Cross station. Arriving there he dismissed him, and taking another cab deposited his silent but wondering wife at the door of Abbot's Hotel.
Then, after booking the suite of rooms, he left her, and entering a passing taxi was driven to St. Mary Axe.
*****
A few days following the hurried and undignified evacuation of No. 8, Belitha Villas, a smart and exceedingly well-groomed little man was contentedly sitting in a front private room of the Union Hotel at Penzance.