Miss Montressor had literally never been so taken aback in all her life.
'What could it mean?' she again asked herself, this time without the vaguest indication of an answer; and now she was alarmed as well as sorry. Was this indeed to be a fatal and irreparable breach?
Rather late on the same evening a four-wheeled cab drove up at the door of No. 192 Queen-street, Mayfair. Two females occupied the vehicle, one of whom was presumably, by her dress and appearance, a respectable upper servant, perhaps a lady's maid. Her dress was plain, but suitable to such an assumption, and she was closely veiled. Leaving her companion, who was somewhat similarly attired, in the cab, this person rang the bell and requested to see the mistress of the house. A respectable-looking middle-aged woman, with a countenance exhibiting that peculiar mixture of conventional complacency and ever-present anxiety which characterises the London lodging-house keeper, presented herself in answer to this request, and begged that the lady would step into her little room. The visitor explained at once, to avoid disappointing the expectation which was very plainly written in the landlady's anxious face, that she had not come to engage rooms, that she had merely called to make inquiry. This announcement was met with no decrease of civility, and the invitation to walk in was repeated.
It then appeared that the visitor had called to inquire about the lodger who had recently left No. 192, and the interview between the two women very rapidly assumed the aspect of a gossiping chat. Mrs. Watts was very sorry to part with her lodger, 'which he was quite the gentleman,' and had gone away with his luggage in a cab, and himself in a hansom. There was a deal of luggage; them big boxes as come from New York, and looks like ladies' boxes mostly. Mrs. Watts could not say where he had gone to--certainly she had seen the labels; but they were two brass labels slipped into the ticket grooves, with New York in black letters upon the metal.
'Was there any name upon the trunks?' asked the visitor.
Mrs. Watts was quite sure there was no name anywhere, nor upon the strapped-up package of railway rugs, canes, and umbrellas.
'Did Mrs. Watts,' asked the visitor, 'entertain any doubt whatever upon the subject?'
'He had left in the evening, and she had heard the driver of the hansom directed to Euston Station, to catch the Liverpool mail.'
This was conclusive, and the visitor, taking a polite leave of Mrs. Watts, got into the cab and drove home without exchanging a single word with her companion.
'He is mad,' thought Miss Montressor during that silent drive, and there was a strange complacency in her mind at this conclusion--'he is stark mad with jealousy--who would have thought it? Well, he will get over it, I suppose, and it don't matter to me.'