Malham’s heart beat in sickening thuds. Was it a moment, or an hour, during which he stood and stared back into those terrible eyes? To the onlookers the pause was barely perceptible; to him it seemed endless as eternity.
It was only when he was seated beside his bride in the carriage, and Anne was sobbing against his shoulder, that Malham realised the meaning of Celia’s eyes.
They were dead eyes. They had no expression!
The reception was a nightmare, but it came to an end at last, and Malham and his bride bade good-bye to their friends, and started on the first stage of their honeymoon. It had been arranged that they should remain in town until the next morning, when they were to make an early start for the Continent. They drove to a fashionable hotel, where a suite of rooms had been secured for their use, and after a couple of hours’ rest, went through the ordeal of their first tête-à-tête meal.
Malham felt like a man in a dream. He moved, he spoke, he ate, and drank as might a machine wound up to perform certain actions, but he was conscious of nothing but a pair of dead eyes gazing at him out of a living face. There was only one feeling of which he was capable—a feeling of fear—of deadly, overmastering fear.
Dinner over, Malham excused himself, and repaired to the great lounge of the hotel. Anne had recovered her composure, and had embarked upon a series of sentimental reminiscences which bade fair to drive him demented. At all costs he must escape from her presence.
He seated himself at one of the small tables and automatically lifted an evening paper. The first thing that met his eye was his own name at the head of a column. “Marriage of Mr John Malham and Lady Anne Mulliner.” He crushed the sheet with a savage hand, and thrust it back on the table, and as he did so another paragraph separated itself from the context and smote upon his brain.
“Suicide of a High School Teacher. A well-dressed young woman was drowned in the Serpentine at five o’clock this afternoon. The life-saving apparatus was put in operation with all possible speed, but when the body was recovered, life was found to be extinct. The deceased had letters in her possession addressed to Miss Celia Bevan, 19 Wrothesley Street, Maida Vale. It is believed to be a case of premeditated suicide.”
Across the hall two young men were whispering to each other behind their papers.
“That fellow over there, by the big palm,—that’s Malham! Reading an account of his own wedding. Clever fellow, but poor as a rat. Been dragging along for years at the Bar, but that’s all over now! With a father-in-law like Lord Fluteson to give him a push, he’ll soon romp ahead. Jolly good day’s work this has been for him!”