Hubert’s face haunted him all the day, and it gave him, therefore, great satisfaction to receive, a few hours later, at his chambers in the city, a penciled note from the young man, saying that he had resolved to change his plans.
“I shall go abroad for a little while, for I think this is necessary; but I shall return and take up my duties, as you suggested. I am awfully sorry, old fellow, to have bored you with a recital of my worries, but I feel better altogether since I have seen you. Your plain speaking has done good, you see.”
Valentine was touched by the note, but his interview with Hubert had put the finishing touch to the restlessness that had lived with him all day.
He felt suddenly that he in his turn needed to go away.
He had almost a fear to go back to Grace, and laugh, and talk, and eat, as though life was just as usual.
“Twenty-four hours alone somewhere out of the beaten track will do me good,” he said to himself, and he determined to send a telegram to Grace, announcing he should not be at home that night.
He said no more than that, for in truth at the moment he did not know where he should go; but as he finished his business, and walked out into the streets, an idea came rushing to his brain, an idea born of that vague longing that had come to him earlier in the day as he had sat in the train and had watched the raindrops patter on the window.
“I will go and see the sea,” he said to himself. “I will go to Beachcroft. Blainey will, no doubt, find room for me; and if not, I can always sleep at the inn.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SYMPATHY OF THE WAVES.
The wet day had ended in a storm of wind and heavy rain, with waves running mountains high.