She gave him her hand at parting, as she had given it at the end of their first interview, and he thought more of that cordial handshake than of her present, which he found to be a cheque for £500.
In the third week in December there was a very quiet wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square, a marriage which was celebrated at half-past eight o'clock in the morning, and at which the only witnesses were Susan Rodney and Mr. George Howard, newly returned from Pekin—a wedding so early and so quiet as to escape the most invincible of the society paragraphists, the insatiable pens that had been writing about this very marriage as an imminent event.
The bride's dark-grey cloth gown, sable-bordered travelling-cloak, and black chip hat offered no suggestion of wedding raiment. The breakfast was a parti carré in the dining-room at Grosvenor Square; and the married lovers were able to leave Charing Cross at eleven by the Continental Express without provoking any more notice from the crowd than the appearance of a beautiful woman, perfectly dressed for the business in hand, and leading the most perfect thing in brown poodles, must inevitably attract. The honeymooners were established at their hotel in Cairo before the paragraphists had wind of the marriage.
CHAPTER XIV.
"But now with lights reverse the old hours retire,
And the last hour is shod with fire from hell.
This is the end of every man's desire."
During the four months which had elapsed since Faunce's first visit to Kate Delmaine, alias Mrs. Randall, the detective had contrived to keep an observant eye upon the lady; but he had not succeeded in arriving on a more friendly footing with her, although he had obliged her on several occasions with a small advance on account of the promised reward.
He had called three or four times at the lodging-house in the dingy street near the Thames, and she had received him civilly. He had detected a lurking anxiety under the assumed lightness of her manner—a carking care, that seemed to him of some deeper nature than the need of money, or the sense of having fallen upon evil days. He would not have been surprised to see her depressed and out of spirits; but he was at a loss to understand that ever-present anxiety, and that nervous irritability which seemed allied with fear.
He remarked to her, in a friendly way, on the state of her nerves, and advised her to see a doctor. He urged her to live well, and to take the utmost care of herself, to which end he was liberal with those ten-pound notes on account.
"I want you to look your best when you appear in court," he said, "to show that you are every bit as handsome a woman as Lady Perivale."