"Indeed!" said Mr. Rashleigh, vividly interested at once; "and how is Mrs. Holywell?"
"Very poorly, sir. She thinks she's dying herself. She wants to make her will to-night; that's why she sent for you."
Mr. Rashleigh rose with very unwonted alacrity.
She was a distant relative of his, this dying Mrs. Holywell; ridiculously rich for a childless widow, and with no nearer heir than the reverend pastor of St. Pancras' Church.
"I will accompany you at once, my dear! Poor Mrs. Holywell! But it is the fate of all flesh! How did you come, pray? It rains, does it not?"
A fierce gust of wind rattled the double windows, and frantically beat the rain against them by way of answer.
"I came in a carriage, sir. It is at the door now."
"That is well. I will not detain you an instant. Ah! poor Mrs. Holywell!"
The parson's hat and overcoat hung in the room. In a moment they were on; in another he was following the very respectable young woman down-stairs; in a third he was scrambling after her into the carriage; in a fourth they were rattling wildly over the wet, stony streets; in a fifth the reverend gentleman was grasped in a vise-like grip, and a voice close to his ear—a man's voice—hissed:
"Speak one word, make the least outcry, and you are a dead man!"