"A great deal too much; you can ask me nothing." Carson shrugged his shoulders. "This is hardly conversation," he added. "At all events, you must excuse me if I say it does not interest me. As you say, we had better part. After I leave for town in the morning, I will trouble you no more."
"Thank God," said Olive, moving towards the door of her room. "At least I shall be spared the indignity of living with you."
"Allow me," said Carson, stretching forward to open the door for her. "Good-night, and good-bye."
"You contemptible cur," said his wife, disappearing and slamming the door behind her.
He smiled as he looked after her. "A cur, am I? It is lucky for you, Miss Bellairs, that I do not use my teeth more fully to substantiate your simile; I could, you know. Ah, well!" drawing a long sigh of relief, "thank goodness, that's over. What a weary, dreary time it has been. However, at last, I can enjoy the fruits of my labours. After all, the money is well worth the trouble;" and Mr. Carson proceeded to the bar to drink a toast to his release in a glass of lemonade. Temperance was one of his good points.
When Olive rose next morning he was gone, bag and baggage. He said no word of farewell, nor did he even leave a note behind him. She felt immensely relieved, yet she could not help feeling she had debased herself, that her self-respect was sullied. It had been a fatal mistake.
But Olive was not the woman to sit down with ashes on her head and bemoan her fate. Suppressing the fact that her husband had left her (that she intended to explain personally later), she wrote to Miss Slarge that, after a further two weeks' stay at Sandbeach, she intended leaving for London. "I don't feel like returning to Casterwell at present," she wrote, "I would rather spend the winter months in London. Please let me know when you expect Mrs. Purcell. I am most anxious to see her. When I am settled in town, you and Tui must come up that we may all be together." She sent kind messages to Mr. Brock and to Miss Ostergaard, and she inquired if Mallow was still with Lord Aldean. Miss Slarge did not omit to answer this last query. He was still there; it was the greatest comfort to her to know that.
A few days later came a letter from Mr. Dimbal, which seriously alarmed her. It drew her attention to the fact that Carson had recently sold the securities in which her money was invested, and transferred the proceeds to the Crédit Lyonnais, in Paris. Suspicious of Carson's behaviour generally, more especially when it came to taking things altogether out of his hands, Mr. Dimbal had made inquiries, and had ascertained what he now wrote to Olive. She could not understand it at all, and had she known his whereabouts, would straightway have written to him for an explanation. But he had left her without an address. He had vanished completely out of her life. Apparently it was his intention that these funds should vanish with him. Probably, the thousand pounds paid to her credit was all she would ever see of it. The position was certainly becoming serious.
She recalled Mrs. Purcell's letter, and her description of Carson. She read over the extracts she had made, with the result that she wrote again to Casterwell; this time--of all people--to Mrs. Drabble. That lady's reply roused the strongest suspicions in her regarding her husband, and she felt the time had come when she could no longer cope with things unaided. Her first impulse was to call in the assistance of Mr. Dimbal, but on second thoughts she refrained. The little jog-trot solicitor was hardly the man to deal with a clever scoundrel of Carson's type, for scoundrel she now fully believed him to be. There was Mallow; he was capable beyond a doubt, and by his love for her had he not claimed the right to serve her in time of need? She would write to him without loss of time. The next day he was at Sandbeach.
Olive was in her sitting-room when the servant brought up his name. In the adjacent bedroom Clara was attending to her work.