“Stop where you are,” he said to the coachman, and ran back to the station, an evil augury in his mind.
He went to the up-platform, the platform at which he had alighted ten minutes before.
“Did you see Mrs. Greswold here just now?” he asked the station-master, with as natural an air as he could command.
“Yes, sir. She got into the up-train, sir; the train by which you came. She came out of the waiting-room, sir, the minute after you left the platform. You must just have missed her.”
“Yes, I have just missed her.”
He walked up and down the length of the platform two or three times in the thickening dusk. Yes, he had missed her. She had left him. Such a departure could mean only severance—some deep wound—which it might take long to heal. It would all come right by and by. There could be no such thing as parting between man and wife who loved each other as they loved—who were incapable of falsehood or wrong.
What was this jealous fancy that had taken possession of her? This unappeasable jealousy of the dead past—a passion so strong that it had prompted her to rush away from him in this clandestine fashion, to torture him by all the evidences of an inconsolable grief. His heart was sick to death as he went back to the carriage, helpless to do anything except go to his deserted home, and see what explanation awaited him there.
It was half-past eight when the carriage drove up to the Manor House. Pamela ran out into the hall to receive him.
“How late you are, uncle!” she cried, “and I can’t find aunt. Everything is at sixes and sevens. The concert was a stupendous success—and—only think!—I was encored.”
“Indeed, dear!”