“Presentiments are all stuff.”
“Yes, I know; so are women; but one has them both in—hansoms. Jim!”
“All right; but only to the station, not inside!”
She assented, and they parted, finally, with a feminine complexity of farewell, under the glass-roofed entry; South arriving on the platform to discover that the nine-fifteen had been advanced ten minutes since the first of the month, and that, thanks to Rosamond’s presentiments, he had lost the last train to Veyne St. Mary’s by a few seconds.
V.
Vexed as he was with the woman who had barred the way, he was almost minded, driving back, to acquaint her with his failure.
The inclination was perverse and not in his sanest manner; but her presence had overpowered him that night as an inhaled narcotic; something diffusive in her strong, warm beauty, filling his room, had numbed him as he breathed it.
But his senses came again in the night air, and he kept on, after crossing the river, by the abbey, and his homeward way.
He had left his key behind him, and learned, on entering, that a gentleman awaited him above.
“Who?” he inquired, and was told Lord Veynes.