'Well, there are questions of elocution that I would like to speak to you about. I've to run away now, but we're sure to meet again.'
'I'm on the pier every day at noon, or you will find me in my hotel at five. I hope you'll come, for I should like to avail myself of your instruction.'
'Thank you; I hope to have the pleasure of calling upon you to-morrow afternoon. Good-bye.'
'You don't know my name,' she cried after him. 'Heroes are full of forgetfulness and naturally, but in this tea-table world we can't get on without names and addresses. Will you take my card?'
Dick took the card, thanked her and turned suddenly away.
'Like a man filled with disquiet,' the lady said, and she watched the burly actor hurrying up the pier. 'Is this woman coming to meet him?' she asked herself as Dick hurried away still faster, for in the distance the woman coming down the pier seemed to him like his wife, and if Kate caught him talking to a woman on the pier all chance of doing any business with his new acquaintance would be at an end. But the woman who had just passed him by was not Kate, and the thought crossed his mind that he might return to his new acquaintance with safety. But on the whole it seemed to him better to wait until to-morrow. To-morrow he would find out all about her. 'Her name,' he said, and taking the card out of his pocket he read: 'Mrs. Forest, Mother Superior of the Yarmouth Convent, Alexandra Hotel, Hastings.' 'Mother Superior of a Convent! I should never have thought it. But if she is a nun, why isn't she in a habit? Classical cartoons and nunneries. I think this time I've hit upon a strange specimen, one of the strangest I've ever met, which is saying a great deal, for I've met with a good few in my time. It will be better to tear up her card, for if Kate should find it——'
And then, dismissing Mrs. Forest from his mind, he wondered if he should find Kate drunk or sober. 'Quite sober,' he said to himself as soon as he crossed the threshold; and in the best of humours his wife greeted him, and taking his arm they went down to the pier and gave an entertainment that was appreciated by a fairly large audience.
'Why didn't she ask me to come to her at five to-day?' he asked himself as he returned home with his wife. 'She may fall through my fingers,' and he would have gone straight away to Mrs. Forest, if he had been able to rid himself of Kate.
'You'll take me out to tea, Dick?' she said, and to keep her sober he took her to tea. For the nonce Kate drunk would have suited him better than Kate sober, and he dared not go down to the pier next morning in search of Mrs. Forest, it being more than likely that Kate might take it into her head to sun herself on the pier, so he decided to wait; the pier was too dangerous. If he weren't interrupted by Kate the directors might see them together, and they might know Mrs. Forest and tell her that he was a married man. No, he'd just keep his appointment with her at five. But to get rid of Kate required a deep plan. It was laid and succeeded, and at five he arrived at the Alexandra Hotel.
'Is Mrs. Forest in?'