I could not help it if I made a poor return to their warm-hearted congratulations, for my eyes were once more searching for a face I could not see, so that I was glad and relieved when I heard the superintendent say that the motor-car that was to take me to the hotel was ready and waiting.
But just then O'Sullivan came up and whispered that a priest and a nun were asking to speak to me, and he believed they had news of Mary.
The priest proved to be dear old Father Dan, and the nun to be Sister Veronica, whom my dear one calls Mildred. At the first sight of their sad-joyful faces something gripped me by the throat, for I knew what they had come to say before they said it—that my darling was lost, and Father Dan (after some priestly qualms) had concluded that I was the first man who ought to be told of it.
Although this was exactly what I had expected, it fell on me like a thunderbolt, and in spite of the warmth of my welcome home, I believe in my soul I was the most downhearted man alive.
Nevertheless I bundled Father Dan and the Sister and O'Sullivan into the automobile, and jumping in after them, told the chauffeur to drive like the deuce to the hotel.
He could not do that, though, for the crowd in the station-yard surrounded the car and shouted for a speech. I gave them one, saying heaven knows what, except that their welcome made me ashamed of not having got down to the Pole, but please God I should get there next time or leave my bones on the way.
We got to the hotel at last (the same that my poor stricken darling had stayed at after her honeymoon), and as soon as we reached my room I locked the door and said:
"Now out with it. And please tell me everything."
Father Dan was the first to speak, but his pulpit style was too slow for me in my present stress of thoughts and feelings. He had hardly got further than his difference with his Bishop, and the oath he had sworn by him who died for us to come to London and never go back until he had found my darling, when I shook his old hand and looked towards the Sister.
She was quicker by a good deal, and in a few minutes I knew something of my dear one's story—how she had fled from home on my account, and for my sake had become poor; how she had lodged for a while in Bloomsbury; how hard she had been hit by the report of the loss of my ship; and how (Oh my poor, suffering, heroic, little woman!) she had disappeared on the approach of another event of still more serious consequence.