“Now, then, I’m better now. The old strength’s coming back, and—No,” he cried, with a whine of misery, “I can’t go on. If I go there it will seem as if he’s back and at my elbow always. It’s bad enough at home. He seems to haunt the cursed place, and I’m always fancying he’s there. That doctor does me no good; no good. I want strength, strength. There, I’ll go back.”
He was so weak that, short as the distance was, he was well-nigh spent, and had to sit down twice. But as he reached the end of the hollow road, overshadowed by trees, and came out in the open, where he could see the sea and feel the cool breeze, he recovered himself.
“Yes, there she lies,” he said, as he let his eyes rest upon his yacht. “What a time since I have been aboard! Yes, why not at once? We’ll go to-morrow and sail across to France, and coast down to the Pyrenees. Get away from here; curse the place. It will be long before I come back.”
He panted a little as he turned up the slope and passed through the gateway, to pause on the terrace, and look once more upon the yacht, as she lay about a quarter of a mile from where he stood.
“I was a fool not to think of it before. Get her right away; she daren’t refuse. No, no; not so bad as that. She wouldn’t have dared. And yet it would have been so easy while I was lying by.”
He entered the hall with curious thoughts buzzing through his brain.
“A miserable, puling, white-faced thing! Where is she? I’ll tell her to get ready. We will go to-morrow.”
He went into the drawing-room, but Claude was not there, and in an instant suspicion was master of his brain. Where was she?
He crossed the room and looked out through the open window, but no Claude. Then, hurrying to the dining-room, he saw that she was not there.
As he came out, he caught sight of a skirt just passing through a swing-door, and he dashed after it.