There was no other room upon this floor. Above this floor there were only the rooms of the servants.
He went downstairs to the dining-room and rang the bell The parlour-maid came in answer to his summons.
"Where is your mistress?" he asked.
"Gone out, sir; she went at eight o'clock this morning. And O, if you please, sir, Dr. Jedd called, and said I was to give you this—with the certificate."
The certificate! Yes, the certificate of Charlotte Halliday's death,—the certificate which he must produce to-morrow, with other evidence, for the satisfaction of the bill-discounter and his legal adviser. He stared at the girl, still possessed by the sense of bewilderment which had come upon him on seeing those empty rooms upstairs. He took the letter from her almost mechanically, and tore it open without looking at the address. The certificate dropped to the ground. He picked it up with a tremulous hand, and for some moments stood staring at it with dazzled, unseeing eyes. He could see that it was a document with dates and names written in a clerkly hand. For some moments he could see no more. And then words and names shone out of the confusion of letters that spun and whirled, like motes in the sunshine, before his dazzled eyes.
"Valentine Hawkehurst, bachelor, author, Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road, son of Arthur Hawkehurst, journalist; Charlotte Halliday, spinster, of the Lawn, Bayswater, daughter of Thomas Halliday, farmer."
He read no more.
It was a copy of a certificate of marriage—not a certificate of death—that had been brought to him.
"You can go," he said to the servant hoarsely.
He had a vague consciousness that she was staring at him with curious looks, and that it was not good for him to be watched by any one just now.