All that day and most of the next she kept her room. It was no falsehood to say she was ill—she was. She lay upon her bed, her dark eyes open, her hands clasped over her head, looking blankly before her. To-morrow they must part, and after to-morrow—but her mind gave it up; she could not look beyond.
She came downstairs when to-morrow came to say farewell. The white wrapper she wore was not whiter than her face. Mr. Stuart shook hands in a nervous, hurried sort of way that had grown habitual to him of late. Mrs. Stuart kissed her fondly, Miss Stuart just touched her lips formally to her cheek, and Mr. Charles Stuart held her cold fingers for two seconds in his warm clasp, looked, with his own easy, pleasant smile, straight into her eyes, and said good-by precisely as he said it to Lady Helena. Then it was all over; they were gone; the wheels that bore them away crashed over the gravel: Edith Darrell felt as though they were crashing over her heart.
That night the Stuarts were established in elegant apartments at
Langham's Hotel.
But alas for the frailty of human hopes! "The splendid time" Trixy so confidently looked forward to never came. The very morning after their arrival came one of the boys in uniform with another sinister orange envelope for the head of the family. The head of the family chanced to be alone in his dressing-room. He took it with trembling hand and bloodshot eyes, and tore it open. A moment after there was a horrible cry like nothing human, then a heavy fall. Mrs. Stuart rushed in with a scream, and found her husband lying on the floor, the message in his hand, in a fit.
* * * * *
Captain Hammond had made an appointment with Charley to dine at St. James Street that evening. Calling upon old friends kept the gallant captain of Scotch Grays occupied all day; and as the shades of evening began to gather over the West End, he stood impatiently awaiting his arrival. Mr. Stuart was ten minutes late, and if there was one thing in this mortal life that upset the young warrior's equanimity, it was being kept ten minutes waiting for his dinner. Five minutes more! Confound the fellow—would he never come? As the impatient adjuration passed the captain's lips, Charley came in. He was rather pale. Except for that, there was no change in him. Death itself could hardly have wrought much change in Charley. He had not come to apologize; he had not come to dine. He had come to tell the captain some very bad news. There had been terrible commercial disasters of late in New York; they had involved his father. His father had embarked almost every dollar of his fortune in some bubble speculations that had gone up like a rocket and come down like a stick. He had been losing immensely for the past month. This morning he had received a cable message, telling him the crash had come. He was irretrievably, past all hope of redemption, ruined.
All this Charley told in his quietest voice, looking out through the great bay window at the bustle and whirl of fashionable London life, at the hour of seven in the evening. Captain Hammond, smoking a cigar, listened in gloomy silence, feeling particularly uncomfortable, and not knowing in the least what to say. He took out his cheroot and spoke at last.
"It's a deuced bad state of affairs, Charley. Have you thought of anything?"
"I've thought of suicide," Charley answered, "and made all the preliminary arrangements. I took out my razor-case, examined the edges, found the sharpest, and—put it carefully away again. I loaded all the chambers of my revolver, and locked it up. I sauntered by the classic banks of the Serpentine, sleeping tranquilly in the rays of the sunset (that sounds like poetry, but I don't mean poetry). Of the three I think I prefer it, and if the worst comes to the worst, it's there still, and it's pleasant and cool."
"How do your mother and sister take it?" Captain Hammond gloomily asked.