"Will you ever explain?"
"Yes! No! I can't say. So much depends upon what kind of a man I find you to be. Now, go, please, as I must dress for my visit. Mind, I shall expect you at three o'clock, to tell you the result of my interview."
"At three o'clock," repeated Ellis, earnestly, and so they parted.
When the doctor found himself in the broad, cheerful sunshine of the Jubilee Road he was not quite certain if he was asleep or awake. To him Mrs. Moxton was more of an enigma than the murder itself. He could not understand her attitude, nor could he guess what motive she had in acting thus strangely. She was apparently pleased that he loved her; she was angry at his abrupt declaration; he could not gain her confidence; yet she requested him to meet her at three o'clock to ask his advice about her visit. What was he to understand from such a medley of contradictions? He sought in his own mind for every possible explanation, but could find none, so concluding that it was the more sensible course to possess his soul in patience until this sphinx explained her own riddle, he returned home. Here, to his surprise, he found a friend of the morbid lady's come to consult him about her heart, and in the joy of such promise of an increasing practice he forgot Mrs. Moxton and her eccentricities. In a similar situation a woman would not have forgotten, but Byron's lines give the reason for that:
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
'Tis woman's whole existence."
Nevertheless, when his mind was less occupied with material things, the feeling about Mrs. Moxton revived, and he waited impatiently for the hour of three. It would seem that circumstances were about to involve him in the drama,--it might be tragedy--of this woman's life, and he felt eager for the call to step on the stage. What part would be assigned to him he could not guess. Was he to be the husband of the heroine or merely the friend, or would he pose as the foil to that shadowy lover in whose existence and guilt Cass believed? Altogether Ellis was in the dark, afraid to venture forward for fear of the unknown. He waited for a hand to draw him on to his doom--in plain English, for the hand and guidance of Mrs. Moxton. These strange thoughts, passing through the doctor's mind, made him fear that its usually accurate balance was disturbed.
Shortly after three o'clock struck from the bran-new brick tower of the bran-new Dukesfield church, he saw her walking briskly down the road. Even in his pre-occupation he noted her trim figure, the decided way in which she set down and lifted her feet, and the general air of alert resolution which stamped her whole being. Here was a woman of mind, of decision, of character, with few feminine failings, and more than ever Ellis wondered at her past history, as related by herself at the inquest. He began to suspect that there might be something after all in the ideas of Harry Cass. Mrs. Basket declared the woman "was a deep 'un." That also might be true.
"Good news! good news!" cried Mrs. Moxton, when she arrived. "I have seen Mr. Busham and I am right. Old Moxton made a will leaving the property to Edgar."
"But he is dead. How do you stand now?"
The widow let the gate click behind her, and walked up the path with a wrinkled brow, betokening thought. "That depends upon Edgar's will."