“No,” said Onslow shortly, as a strange suspicion flashed through his brain, and he turned and hurried away.
Had Lucille been saved, and was this some fresh scheme on her part, some fresh web spinning to entangle him and keep him and Fenella apart?
He shivered slightly as he walked sharply away, feeling that he must by an accident have escaped from some new peril; and as he walked rapidly on through the crowded streets he saw nothing but the face of his fair young wife gazing at him reproachfully, but with a yearning look of forgiveness in her eyes.
“Yes, there must be forgiveness now,” he muttered feverishly; “I do not deserve it, but for Ronny’s sake. And she is waiting for me—waiting till I go to her and on my knees beg her to come, and she will come, for the sake of our darling boy.”
He was hurrying on with the busy tide of life eddying by his side, but his eyes had once more assumed their fixed, hypnotic look as he gazed straight before him, seeing the chamber in which his child lay dying, as it seemed, his little head tossing from side to side, while his monotonous, ceaseless cry was for his mother.
He had room but for one thought now, and that was to fetch Fenella to her boy’s bedside; and as the mental vision faded, and his countenance resumed its wonted aspect, the influence remained.
He hesitated for a few moments, thinking that he would first return to the hotel, but feeling that if the boy were worse he would not have the strength of mind to leave him, he forced himself in the other direction and made straight for the great station.
“It was madness to expect her to come here,” he kept on muttering. “It was my duty to fetch her to our child.”
His actions were almost mechanical, but throughout he felt as if some force other than his own natural impulse was urging him on in all that followed, though there seemed nothing unusual in the aspect of the careworn man who spoke to the inspector on the great platform, learned that the next London express started in half an hour, and then paced the flags slowly till he could take a ticket and his place in a corner of one of the coupés.
The rest was dreamlike, and there were times when he became unconscious. It could hardly be called sleep. And at those moments, mingled with the rush and roar of the swift train, he could hear Ronny’s plaintive cry for her who would bring him back to life and health, while in the faint distance, as if beckoning him onward, there was Fenella’s sweet, half-reproachful face, waiting, always waiting until he should come.