"My honeymoon," he whispered to himself. "My God!" Then he said aloud. "And there was no message? No letter left in the room? You are sure?"
"There was nothing. I entered the room meaning to offer Madame some supper--it was vacant. No sign of aught. The fire was gone out. The lamp was extinct. There was--nothing."
"Nothing!" Walter repeated. "Nothing! No sign of aught. Not a line of writing. No letter left then or come since."
"Oh," exclaimed the woman, "as for 'come since'--there are several----"
"And you have kept me thus in torture! Where are they? Where? Where? Doubtless one is from her?"
"I will go and fetch them. Since Monsieur has been away I have not opened the rooms. Not since I cleaned them during the first days of Monsieur's absence."
"Fetch them at once, I beseech you. Yet, ere you go, give me the key of this padlock. Let me enter the rooms. Bring the letters here at once."
The woman sped on her way to the back of the house, and, while she was gone, Walter applied the key to the padlock--brushing away the spider and its web as he did so--then turned the other key of the door and entered his sitting-room while he muttered, "She will have gone to England, as I wished her. She has written from there. All will be well. All. All. Yet why did she go so soon? Why leave this house the moment my back was turned?"
And, even as he remembered she had done this, he felt a pang at his heart.
Why! Why I Why had she acted thus? Why before seeing him again; before waiting for his return?