"Is it possible, Mrs. Tudor," he asked her eagerly, "that you are not aware that in actual practice a reasonably well-behaved prisoner never serves the full period of his sentence? Marks for good conduct are allowed, and each mark means so many days deducted from the term."
"I didn"t know," said Camilla simply. "How should I know a thing like that?"
"I have no doubt that young Powitt is already free. And if he is--"
"You think that Mr. Ravengar"s suicide may not have been a suicide?"
Hugo hesitated.
"Yes," he said, and lapsed into reflection.
"I shall see you home," he said.
"I am going to walk," she replied. "And I have to get my things from the cloak-room."
"I will walk with you," he said.
"What style the woman has!" he thought, enraptured.
They proceeded southwards in silence. Then suddenly she asked how he had left Mr. Darcy, and they began to talk about Darcy and Paris. Hugo encouraged her. He wished to know the worst.
"Except my father," she said, "I have never met anyone with more sense than Mr. Darcy, or anyone more kind. I might have been dead now if it hadn"t been for Mr. Darcy."
"Mr. Darcy is a very decent fellow," Hugo remarked experimentally.
She turned and gave him a look. No, it was not a look; it was the merest fraction of a look, but it withered him up.
"She loves him!" he thought. "And what"s more, if she hadn"t made up her mind to marry him, she wouldn"t be so precious easy and facile and friendly with me. I might have guessed that."
They pa.s.sed Victoria Station, and came into Horseferry Road. She had informed him that she had taken a furnished room in Horseferry Road. The high and sinister houses appeared unspeakably and disgracefully mean to him in the wintry gloom of the gaslights. She halted before a tenement that seemed even more odious than its neighbours. Was it possible that she should exist in such a quarter? The idea sickened him.
"Which floor?" he questioned.
"Oh," she laughed, "the top, the fifth. Good-night, Mr. Hugo."
He pictured the mean and frowsy room, and shuddered. Yet what could he do? What right had he to interfere, to criticise, to ameliorate?
"Good-night," she repeated, and in a moment she had opened the door with a latchkey and disappeared. He stood staring at the door. He had by no means finished saying all that he meant to say to her. He must talk to her further. He must show her that he could not be dismissed in that summary fashion. He mounted the two dirty steps, and rang the bell in a determined manner. He heard it tinkle distantly.
She was divine, adorable, marvellous, and far beyond the deserts of any man; but she had not shaken hands with him, and she had treated him as she might have treated one of the shopwalkers. Moreover, the question of to-morrow had to be decided.
There was no answer to the bell, and he rang again, with an increase of energy.
Then he perceived through the fanlight an illumination in the hall. The door opened cautiously, as such doors always do open, and a middle-aged man in a dressing-gown stood before him. In the background he descried a small table with a candle on it, and the foul, polished walls of the narrow lobby--a representative London lodging-house.
"I want to see Mrs. Tudor," said Hugo.
"Well, she ain"t in at the moment," replied the man.
"Excuse me," Hugo corrected him, "I saw her enter a minute ago with her latchkey."
"No, you didn"t," the man persisted. "I"m the landlord of this house, and I"ve been in my room at the back, and n.o.body"s come in this last half-hour, for I can see the "all and the stairs as I sits in my chair."
"Wait a moment," said Hugo; and he retreated to the kerb, in the expectation of being able to descry Camilla"s light in the fifth story.
"Oh, you can look," the landlord observed loftily, divining his intention; "I warrant there"s no light there."
And there was not.
"Perhaps you"ll call again," said the landlord suavely.
"I suppose you haven"t got a room to let?" Hugo demanded, fumbling about in his brain for a plan to meet this swift crisis.
"I can"t tell you till my wife comes home."
"And when will that be?"
"That"ll be to-morrow."
The door was banged to. Hugo rang again, wrathfully, but the door remained obstinate.
CHAPTER XXV
CHLOROFORM
"Come in," said Simon grandly, in response to a knock.
He was seated in his master"s chair in the dome, which was lit as though for a fete. The clock showed the hour of nine.
Albert entered.
"Oh, it"s you, is it?" exclaimed Albert. "Where"s the governor?"
"I don"t know where he is. He was in his office at something to seven, having an interview with Mrs. Tudor. Since then--"
Simon raised his eyebrows, and Albert expressed a similar sentiment by means of a whistle.
"Then, you"ve been telephoning on your own for me to come up?"
"Yes."
"It"s like your cheek!" Albert complained, calmly perching himself on the top of the grand piano.