Mr Merton looked into a Bradshaw that was lying upon the table. 'The train to meet the night-boat leaves London at half-past eight; to catch that you must start from your house at half-past seven.'
'I will do that. Will you meet me at the station?'
'Yes; I will be there at a quarter past eight.'
'Good-bye till then; and thank you again a thousand times.'
Mr Merton attended her to the outer door of the office, and she drove home well satisfied with her mission. Writing to her father, to tell him everything, and what she was going to do, she packed a small box to take with her, and then did little else but wish the day, which seemed interminable, gone. Long before it was necessary, she was at the station; and punctual to the appointed minute, Mr Merton appeared.
After a journey that to Mabel seemed endless, they at length reached Paris, and drove straight to the hotel in which Wilfred lived.
As they stopped, Mr Merton said: 'You may depend upon it we shall find our trouble wasted, and that the object of your anxiety is out somewhere amusing himself.'
Mabel did not answer. She could hear her heart beat as she sprang out of the cab; and without waiting for her companion, entered the court-yard of the hotel, and went to the den appropriated to the concierge. That gentleman was reading a newspaper, in which he seemed much interested, and did not look up as she came near him.
'Monsieur Merton, est-il chez-lui?' she asked breathlessly.
The concierge put his finger against the word he was reading, in mute protest against being interrupted, and looking slowly up, said rather dreamily: 'Plaît-il, Madame?'