My own eyes filled with scorching tears as I looked at it.
It was the one sign of the passion and agony that had raged in that room before I came back.
If I had only returned sooner! I put the handkerchief in my breast, and took up her letter again. Could I do anything, anything now to follow, to recall her?
I looked at the clock, and ice seemed to close round my heart and chill it. It was already eleven. Then the phrase about the other room struck me. Could she have possibly returned? I opened the door and went upstairs and through all the rooms in the house. All were empty. I saw the bedroom farthest from mine had been put ready for occupancy, and some few trifles of her own taken from our room and put into it. Then I came back, sick with apprehension, to the drawing-room again, questioning what I could do.
To whom would she have gone? As the thought came all the blood in my body seemed to seethe and rage, but the question had to be faced. For a moment no definite idea would form itself. Then the recollection of Lawton dashed in upon me. The man's head seemed photographed suddenly on all the pale walls round me; handsome, brilliant, engaging, well born, and well bred, he was the man of all others surely to attract her.
She would go to him, they would dine together, she would return to his chambers with him…. She had not come back yet.
For a few moments I was mad. I laid my hand on the back of the chair near me, and it was smashed in my grip. Then the madness passed over, and I could think again. I went upstairs, took out my revolver, and loaded it. I thought I would go round to Lawton's place, … but, when coming downstairs again, the thought struck me—Suppose it was not Lawton? What would the latter think of my sudden appearance, my enquiries? Twelve had now struck.
There was just a possibility that she would not fulfil her letter, that she would come back to me; but if I by my actions to-night brought any publicity on what she had done, I should make an injury where none existed.
I thought for some time over this, and it seemed impossible for me to do anything but wait for her return—wait till I knew.
The thought of her name, her reputation, and how I might possibly injure them now held me there motionless.