"Come back!" Richford exclaimed. "Surely it is my place to——"
Long before Richford could reach the porch, his wife and Mark had entered a hansom and were on their way to the Royal Palace Hotel. The story had got about by this time; people stopped to stare at the man in tweeds and the bride in her full array in the hansom. To those two it did not seem in the least strange.
"Did you manage to see my father, after all?" Beatrice asked.
"No, I tried to do so; you see, I had to wait for him. He was very late, so I fell asleep. It was after eleven to-day when I awoke to find Sir Charles had not left his room. I ventured to suggest that he had better be roused or he would be too late for your wedding. Nobody could make him hear, so the door was broken in. He was quite dead."
Beatrice listened in a dull kind of way. There was no trace of tears in her eyes. She had suffered so terribly, lately, that she could not cry. The horrible doubt as to whether she was free or not could not be kept out of her mind. Yet it seemed so dreadfully unnatural.
"He died in his sleep, I suppose?" Beatrice asked.
"That nobody can say yet," Mark said. "The doctor we called in was very guarded. Nobody seems to have been in the bedroom, though the sitting-room adjoining is not locked, and last night I saw a lady come out of it, a lady in grey."
"A lady in grey!" Beatrice cried. "What a singular thing, Mark! Do you mean to say it was the same lady who sat next to you in the Paris theatre?"
"Well, yes," Mark admitted. "It was the same.
I have not told anybody but you, and it seems to me that nothing will be gained by mentioning the fact."