I was rather surprised to find the carriage gone when I descended, but my suspense was of short duration, for it soon came back with a neighbouring doctor, whom Miss Carr had fetched.
Mary was at hand to show him up, while I ran down to the carriage-door, where Miss Carr grasped my hand for a moment, her face now looking flushed and strange.
“Come to me to-night, Antony,” she said in a low voice—“come and tell me all.”
She sank back in the carriage then, as if to hide herself from view, while in obedience to her mute signal, I bade the coachman drive her and her sister home.
Chapter Fifty Seven.
I Find I Have a Temper.
I went to Miss Carr’s nearly every evening now, to report progress; for her instructions to me, after a consultation between Mr Jabez, Mr Ruddle, Mr Girtley, and myself, were that neither expense nor time was to be spared in perfecting the machine.
We had gone carefully into the reasons for the breakdown, and were compelled reluctantly to own that sooner or later the mechanism would have failed; for besides the part I named, we found several weak points in the construction—faults that only a superhuman intelligence could have guarded against. The malignant act had only hastened the catastrophe.