“Lawks!” said the stout girl, in accents of deep surprise, as she drew her head in from the open lattice; “Jim’s got a letter.”
“Perhaps it is for me,” suggested Hilda, a little nervously; she had grown nervous about the post of late. “Will you go and see?”
The letter was for her, in the handwriting of Mrs. Jacobs. She opened it; it contained another addressed in the character the sight of which made her feel sick and faint. She could not trust herself to read it in the presence of the girl.
“Sally,” she said, “I feel rather faint; I shall lie down a little. I will ring for you presently.”
Sally retired, and she opened her letter.
Fifteen minutes after the girl received her summons. She found Hilda very pale, and with a curious look upon her face.
“I hope you’re better, mum,” she said, for she was a kind-hearted girl.
“Better—ah, yes! thank you, Sally; I am cured, quite cured; but please be quick with the things, for I shall leave by the nine o’clock train.”
CHAPTER X.
The night of the dinner-party was a nearly sleepless one for Philip, although his father had so considerately regretted his wearied appearance, he could do nothing but walk, walk, walk, like some unquiet ghost, up and down his great, oak-panelled bedroom, till, about dawn, his legs gave way beneath him; and think, think, think, till his mind recoiled, confused and helpless, from the dead wall of its objects. And, out of all this walking and thinking, there emerged, after an hour of stupor, that it would be a misnomer to call sleep, two fixed results. The first of these was that he hated his father as a lost soul must hate its torturing demon, blindly, madly, impotently hated him; and the second, that he could no longer delay taking his wife into his confidence. Then he remembered the letter he had received from her on the previous morning. He got it, and saw that it bore no address, merely stating that she would be in London by midday on the first of May, that was on the morrow. Till then it was clear he must wait, and he was not sorry for the reprieve. His was not a pleasant story for a husband to have to tell.