The baronet tore it open and read:
“Come to Middlewich at once. William has had a dangerous fall.
Margaret Heath.”
Middlewich was the country seat of the nobleman to whom the baronet’s cousin, William Heath, was private secretary, and it was to this place that he was now so peremptorily summoned.
Lady Linton, in her hiding place, heard her brother read this telegram with a thrill of joy.
She was glad of anything that would take him out of London and away from the danger of meeting “that woman,” and she resolved that it should go hard with her if she could not find some way of opposing other barriers before his return. It was a desperate case, and she was prepared for desperate measures.
She crept out of her brother’s chamber with a pale, drawn face, saying to herself that Rupert Hamilton should never fulfill his engagement with Virgie Alexander, if there was any power on earth to prevent it; she could never bear the humiliation of it.
She packed her brother’s portmanteau with alacrity, and promised to attend faithfully to his various commissions during his absence, and uttered a sigh of relief when the carriage drove from the door, and she knew that he was well on his way to Middlewich.
CHAPTER XIX.
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
Three days later Lady Linton received a letter from her brother, giving the particulars of his cousin’s accident. He had been riding from Chester to Middlewich, when his horse became frightened at some object by the roadside, and Mr. Heath, not being sufficiently on his guard, had been thrown, suffering the fracture of two ribs, a broken arm, and, it was feared, some internal injury besides. He was in a very critical state at the time of Sir William’s writing, and the latter said he should not think of returning to London until assured that his kinsman was out of danger.