“To-morrow?”
“Yes. Have you anything more to say?”
“Nothing more.”
“Leave me, then. I don’t keep up appearances. I wish to be alone, and I say so. Good-morning.”
“Oh, the sex! the sex!” said the doctor, with his excellent temper in perfect working order again. “So delightfully impulsive! so charmingly reckless of what they say or how they say it! ‘Oh, woman, in our hours of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please!’ There! there! there! Good-morning!”
Miss Gwilt rose and looked after him contemptuously from the window, when the street door had closed, and he had left the house.
“Armadale himself drove me to it the first time,” she said. “Manuel drove me to it the second time.—You cowardly scoundrel! shall I let you drive me to it for the third time, and the last?”
She turned from the window, and looked thoughtfully at her widow’s dress in the glass.
The hours of the day passed—and she decided nothing. The night came—and she hesitated still. The new morning dawned—and the terrible question was still unanswered.
By the early post there came a letter for her. It was Mr. Bashwood’s usual report. Again he had watched for Allan’s arrival, and again in vain.