There was a cry from his aunt. As he spoke he dropped, panting and exhausted with his speed, into a chair and laid his hand upon his breast to still its heavy, suffocating throbs.
"Found!" exclaimed Lady Helena; "where—when—how?"
"Wait, aunt," the voice of Inez said gently; "give him time. Don't you see he can scarcely pant? Not a word yet Victor—let me fetch you a glass of wine."
She brought it and he drank it. His face was quite ghastly, livid, bluish rings encircling his mouth and eyes. He certainly looked desperately ill, and more fitted for a sick-bed than a breathless night ride from St. James Street to St. John's Wood. He lay back in his chair, closed his eyes, struggled with his panting breath. They sat and waited in silence, far more concerned for him than for the news he bore.
He told them at last, slowly, painfully, of his chance meeting with Lady Portia Hampton, of his enforced visit to the Oxford Street dress-maker—of his glimpse of the tall girl with the dark hair—of his waiting, of his seeing, and recognizing Edith, his following her, and of his sudden giddy faintness that obliged him to give up the chase.
"You'll think me an awful muff," he said; "I haven't an idea how I came to be such a mollicoddle, but I give you my word I fainted dead away like a school-girl when I got to my room. I suppose it was partly this confounded palpitation of the heart, and partly the shock of the great surprise and joy. Jamison brought me all right somehow, after awhile, and then I came here. I had to do something, or I believe I should have gone clear out of my senses."
Then there was a pause. The two women looked at each other, then at him, his eager eyes, his excited, wild-looking, haggard face.
"Well," he cried impatiently, "have you nothing to say? Is it nothing to you that after all these months—months—great Heavens! it seems centuries. But I have found her at last—toiling for her living, while we—oh! I can't think of it—I dare not; it drives me mad!"
He sprang up and began pacing to and fro, looking quite as much like a madman as a sane one.
"Be quiet, Victor," his aunt said. "It is madness indeed for you to excite yourself in this way. Of course we rejoice in all that makes you happy. She is found—Heaven be praised for it!—she is alive and well—thank Heaven also for that. And now—what next?"