"Helps, when is the Esperance due at Melbourne?"
Again Helps glanced quickly at Mrs. Wyndham; he was standing rather behind her, but could catch a glimpse of her face.
"By the end of May," he said, speaking slowly. His quick eyes sought his chief's; they took their cue. "Not sooner," he continued. "Possibly by the end of May."
"Thank you," said Valentine.
The man withdrew.
"I have nearly a month to wait," she said, rising and looking at her father. "I did not know that the voyage would be such a lengthy one. When you do hear the news will be bad, father; yes, the news will be bad. I have nothing to say about it, no explanation to offer, only I know."
Before Mr. Paget could make a single reply, Valentine had left him. He was decidedly alarmed about her.
"Can she be going out of her mind?" he soliloquized. "Women sometimes do before the birth of their children. What did she mean? It is impossible for her to know anything. Pshaw! What is there to know? I verily believe I am cultivating that abomination of the age—nerves!"
Whatever Valentine did mean, she met her father that evening as if nothing had happened. She was bright, even cheerful; she played and sang for him. He concluded that she was not out of her mind, that she had simply had a fit of the dismals, and dismissed the matter.
The month passed by, slowly for Valentine—very slowly, also, for her father. It passed into space, and there was no news of the Esperance. More days went by, no news, no tidings of any sort. Valentine thought the vessel was a fortnight overdue. Her father knew that it was at least a month behind its time. When he wrote his letter to the rector of Jewsbury-on-the-Wold he felt even more anxious than his words seemed to admit.