She forced a smile. He went on:
"Well, even all this wouldn't account for my being so late. You must know there is nothing I hate so much as notoriety, and I had absolutely got to Waterloo on my way home when it suddenly occurred to me that as two or three hundred people saw the rescue some one might go to the newspapers with an account of it. Nothing could make me more shamefaced than to see my name in print in connection with this affair. I had experience of something of the kind at the time of the fire--you remember, dearest?"
She pressed his hand and said, "My own, my own, my own!"
"So I took a cab and drove round to all the newspaper-offices to bar a report going in. That was what kept me till this hour."
They sat talking for a little while longer, and then she rang for the maid and he went to the dressing-room.
The anxiety caused by his unexpected delay in town, or by the tale he had told her, may have had an injurious effect on the invalid, or it may be that, without any exciting cause, the aggravation would have taken place; but at all events, that night, or, rather, early in the morning, Mrs. Crawford rang her bell, and upon her husband coming to her he found her so much worse that he set off at once for the doctor.
As he closed the front-door after him he whispered to himself, "I wonder is this more of my luck?"
CHAPTER XXIX.
[AN INTRUDER UPON THE AIT.]
When Kate Mellor found herself in the streets of Leeham that evening the light was beginning to fail. The clouds, which during the day had been thin and fleecy, had, as the hours went by, grown in extent and mass. They now hung above, fold over fold, dark, gloomy, threatening. The air was heavy, moist, oppressive. Not a breath of wind stirred.