"Thanks." She spoke wearily. "I'm sorry to have troubled you. Good-night."
In the hall the manservant waited, and Anstice, pitying his evident anxiety, spoke reassuringly to him as he took his coat. "Your mistress is much better now—with a little care she will soon be all right, I hope."
"Thank you, sir." The man's voice quivered with feeling. "We—we are all very anxious when our lady is not well."
"Of course." Anstice took the hat the servant held and moved to the door. "Is that nine striking? I didn't know it was so late."
Yet in spite of the lateness of the hour Anstice did not drive home at a particularly rapid pace. Something in the episode just closed had intrigued him, piqued his curiosity as well as stimulated his interest; and he was wondering, as he drove, what there was about his patient which suggested a mystery—something, at least, unusual unexpected, in her character or surroundings.
"She's uncommonly handsome—but so are heaps of women. Nice house, plenty of money, I should say, and of course she herself is well bred. Yet there is something odd about her—about her manner, rather. Looks at one queerly—almost quizzically—and yet when she smiled she looked extraordinarily sad." He turned a corner rather carelessly and a surprised motor-cyclist sounded his horn reproachfully. "I wonder—is she a widow? There was no sign of a husband, though I believe the servant said something about a child. Anyhow"—he had reached his own house now and slowed down before the gate—"I will see her to-morrow and perhaps learn a little more about her—if there is anything to learn. If not—well, women love to appear mysterious. There never was a woman yet who didn't long to rival the Sphinx and appear an enigma in the eyes of wondering men!"
And he went in to his belated dinner with a rather cynical smile on his lips.
CHAPTER II
Just as Anstice was starting out next morning an urgent telephone message came through, requesting his help at a suddenly imperative operation at a country house some miles distant.