“Well, then, you had better go and call on her in Brompton Cemetery, for I’m told she was buried there last week. My gracious! what’s the matter with the man?” she added, for Rupert had dropped his carpet-bag and fallen back against the doorway.
“Nothing,” he said faintly. “If I might have a glass of water?”
She shook her fat head wisely.
“No, you don’t go to play that glass-of-water trick upon me. I know; I goes to fetch it, and you prigs the things for which I am responsible. But you can come into this room and sit down if you like, if you feel queer, for I ain’t afraid of no one-legged man;” and she opened the door of the dining-room.
Rupert followed her into it and sank into his own chair, for the place was still furnished. Indeed, there in the frame of the looking-glass some of his invitation-cards remained, and on the sideboard stood the bronze Osiris which he had given to Edith. In the turmoil of his dazed mind, it brought back to him a memory of the crypt of the temple at Tama and the great statue of that same god, which presided there over the place of death. Well, it seemed that this also was a place of death.
“When did Mrs. Ullershaw die?” he asked, with an effort.
“About five days before she was buried. That’s the usual time, ain’t it?”
He paused, then asked again: “Do you know where the young Mrs. Ullershaw is?”
“No, I don’t; but my friend said that’s her address on the bit of paper on the mantel-piece in case any letters came to forward.”
Rupert raised himself and took the paper. It was an envelope; that, indeed, in which his last letter to Edith had been posted from Abu-Simbel, and beneath her name, Mrs. Rupert Ullershaw, the Regent’s Park address was scratched out, and that of the Brook Street rooms written instead, in his wife’s own handwriting.