All that wretched day I watched for a chance to see him. Kitty, nearly as anxious as I was myself, hovered around to try to clear the way for me, but in vain. No other day had the upper hall been so favorite a resort. Josephine had ordered her trunks to be put out there, and Ella's also, and Frances was packing them. Ellerton and Grace, lounging on the stairs, watched the operation, Mrs. Churchill sat with her door open. I cannot possibly describe the misery it gave me to know what danger might arise from this delay. I knew too much already of Victor's morbid jealousy, to imagine it was not brooding now over this long neglect. The hours were leaden-winged and fiery-footed; each slow passing one seemed to burn into my very soul.
Kitty wiped away frequent tears as she busied herself about my packing; there were no tears in my eyes as I walked quickly up and down the room, or lay, face downward on the bed, trying to stifle thoughts that I could not endure.
"There's dinner!" said Kitty, ruefully. "And there's no hope of any more chance after it. Mrs. Roberts is at her eternal knitting in the hall window, and Frances won't stop packing these four hours yet. But don't you worry, Miss; I'll manage it, somehow. Go down to dinner, and don't fret!"
Of course not, why should I? What was there in my circumstances to occasion it? Nothing, of course; and nothing, either, to fret about in Josephine's taunts and Grace's sauciness, in the cold eyes of my aunt, in Ella's supercilious scorn; nothing to fret about when the captain talked of the murder and the evidence, the state of the public mind, and the state of his own private mind, in regard to it; when Ellerton talked about the news from town, and the letters he had just received from some of his inestimable chums there resident, and of the inexplicable nature of the fact that none of them had spoken of meeting or seeing Victor before he sailed, and of his own conviction that it was very strange we had heard nothing from him since he left, very strange.
"Oh!" cried Grace, "that's the way, they say, with these foreigners, adventurers, may be. You mustn't be astonished, my dear (turning pleasantly to me), you mustn't be astonished if you shouldn't hear from him 'never no more.' These French meteors, they say, sometimes flash through society in that way, and dazzle everybody, then sink into their native night again. And you know it is just possible our Victor may be of that order; but, of course, I don't want to distress you, only it's as well you should be prepared."
"Grace, hush! you are a saucy child; but really it is odd that we have never heard a word from him since he left."
"Did you expect to, Josephine? I didn't suppose you had made any arrangements to correspond. I am sorry I didn't know how deep your interest was, I might have relieved your mind before. Mr. Viennet is very well. I have heard from him more than once since we parted."
An exclamation of surprise went round the table; I was overwhelmed with questions and reproaches.
"You might have told us, really, now I think," said Ellerton.
"Why did you not ask me, then?"