The messenger retired. Scanning the telegram, I saw it ran as follows—
“Just heard terrible news. Also where you are. Returning at once. Engage rooms for me your hotel.—Mother.”
The telegram had been handed in at Mentone.
Vera seemed a good deal relieved at the thought of seeing her mother again. At this I was not surprised, for, in a sense, she had felt herself responsible for Lady Thorold’s evident ignorance of her husband’s mishap and illness. She had felt all along, she told me, that she should have kept in touch with her mother.
“If my father dies, without my mother having heard of his illness, I shall never forgive myself,” she had said to me once.
Lady Thorold arrived at the Grand Hotel next evening. She had travelled by the Mediterranean express without stopping, and had hardly slept at all. Nevertheless, she insisted upon going at once to the hospital, to see her husband.
He was a little better, the doctor told her. He had recovered consciousness for a short time that evening, and his brain seemed calmer. Several times, while conscious, he had asked why Lady Thorold did not come to him, and where she was. Her absence evidently disturbed him a good deal.
On leaving the hospital, I looked in at Faulkner’s club. He was in the hall, talking to the porter, and just about to come out.
“Ah, my dear Dick,” he exclaimed, “you’re the very man I want to see. How is Sir Charles?”
“A very little better,” I answered. “I have just come from the hospital. Lady Thorold is with him now.”