Olympe Renault, retiring to rest, is long kept awake by the pleasant thought, not that for many more nights will she have to sleep in a mean bed at Glyngog, but on a grand couch in Llangorren Court.
Volume Two—Chapter Eighteen.
Impatient for the Post.
Never man looked with more impatience for a post, than Captain Ryecroft for the night mail from the West, its morning delivery in London. It may bring him a letter, on the contents of which will turn the hinges of his life’s fate, assuring his happiness or dooming him to misery. And if no letter come, its failure will make misery for him all the same.
It is scarce necessary to say, the epistle thus expected, and fraught with such grave consequence, is an answer to his own; that written in Herefordshire, and posted before leaving the Wyeside Hotel. Twenty-four hours have since elapsed; and now, on the morning after, he is at the Langham, London, where the response, if any, should reach him.
He has made himself acquainted with the statistics of postal time, telling him when the night mail is due, and when the first distribution of letters in the metropolitan district. At earliest in the Langham, which has post and telegraph office within its own walls, this palatial hostelry, unrivalled for convenience, being in direct communication with all parts of the world.
It is on the stroke of 8 a.m., and, the ex-Hussar-officer pacing the tesselated tiles, outside the deputy-manager’s moderately-sized room with its front glass-protected, watches for the incoming of the post-carrier.
It seems an inexorable certainty—though a very vexatious one—that person, or thing, awaited with unusual impatience, must needs be behind time—as if to punish the moral delinquency of the impatient one. Even postmen are not always punctual, as Vivian Ryecroft has reason to know. That amiable and active individual in coatee of coarse cloth, with red rag facings, flitting from door to door, brisk as a blue-bottle, on this particular morning does not step across the threshold of the Langham till nearly half-past eight. There is a thick fog, and the street flags are “greasy.” That would be the excuse for his tardy appearance, were he called upon to give one.