“Come at once?”
“Yes,” said the inspector, coolly. “Only in the next street. Case of attempted suicide. Doctor with the party wants a second opinion.”
Chester drew a deep breath, wrote another line of incoherent words, and then, having hard work to speak composedly, he rose and said—
“I am at your service now.”
He followed the inspector to the door, and feeling half stunned at what seemed like so strange an escape, he went to the house where, in a mad fit, the occupant had taken desperate measures to rid himself of a life which had grown hateful; and while Chester aided his colleagues for the next hour in the difficult task of trying to combat the poison taken, he could not help feeling that this might have been his own case if matters had gone otherwise, for despair would have prompted him also to take a life that had become horrible—an existence that he could not have borne.
He went back home at last, but he made no attempt to see sister or aunt, his anger for the time being was too hot against them, and he was in no disposition to make any excuse. His next step was, he felt, to set Marion’s mind at rest regarding the police, and he was about to start for Isabel’s temporary London home, when he hesitated, shrinking from meeting her again. He felt that his position was despicable, and now the danger was past he mentally writhed at the obligation which he had so eagerly embraced.
“What a poor, pitiful, contemptible object I must seem in her eyes,” he muttered as he paced the room.
But he grew cooler after a time. Marion’s happiness must stand first. She was prostrate with horror and despair, and at any cost he felt that he must preserve her from danger, and set her mind at rest.
“But I cannot go,” he muttered—“I cannot face her again.” Then, half mad with himself for his miserable cowardice, he cast aside the pen with which he was about to write, and determined to go.
“She will forgive me,” he said; and he hurried into the hall, took up his hat, and then stopped short, aghast at his helplessness.