During the hours when Mr. Quincunx was undergoing this strange experience, several other human brains under the roofs of Nevilton were feeling the pressure of extreme perturbation.
Gladys, after a gloomy breakfast, which was rendered more uncomfortable, not only by her father’s chaffing references to the approaching ceremony, but by a letter from Dangelis, had escaped to her room to be assisted by Lacrima in dressing for the confirmation.
In his letter the artist declared his intention of spending that night at the Gloucester Hotel in Weymouth, and begged his betrothed to forgive this delay in his return to her side.
This communication caused Gladys many tremors of disquietude. Could it be possible that the American had found out something and that he had gone to Weymouth to meditate at leisure upon his course of action?
In any case this intimation of a delay in his return irritated the girl. It struck her in her tenderest spot. It was a direct flouting of her magnetic power. It was an insult to her sex-vanity.
She had seen nothing of Luke since their Sunday’s excursion; and as Lacrima, with cold submissive fingers, helped her to arrange her white dress and virginal veil, she could hear the sound of the bell tolling for James Andersen’s funeral.
Mingled curiously enough with this melancholy vibration falling at protracted intervals upon the air, like the stroke of some reiterated hammer of doom, came another sound, a sound of a completely opposite character,—the preluding strains, namely, of the steam roundabouts of Porter’s Universal Show.
It was as though on one side of the village the angel of death were striking an iron-threatening gong, while, on the other side, the demons of life were howling a brazen defiance.
The association of the two sounds as they reached her at this critical hour brought the figure of Luke vividly and obsessingly into her mind. How well she knew the sort of comment he would make upon the bizarre combination! Beneath the muslin frills of her virginal dress,—a dress that made her look fairer and younger than usual,—her heart ached with sick longing for her evasive lover.
The wheel had indeed come full circle for the fair-haired girl. She could not help the thought recurring again and again, as Lacrima’s light fingers adjusted her veil, that the next time she dressed in this manner it would be for her wedding-day. Her one profound consolation lay in the knowledge that her cousin, even more deeply than herself, dreaded the approach of that fatal Thursday.