As he
steamed slowly into Paddington Station, another train steamed out, and
had he been careful to examine the occupants of the first-class
carriages as they passed him in a slow procession, he might have seen
something that would have interested him; but he was, not unnaturally,
too much occupied with his own thoughts to allow of the indulgence of
an idle curiosity. On the arrival of his train, he took a cab and
drove without delay to the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and asked
for Mrs. Roberts.
"She isn't back yet, sir," was Mrs. Jacobs' reply. "I got this note
from her this morning to say that she would be here by twelve, but
it's twenty past now, so I suppose that she has missed the train or
changed her mind; but there will be another in at three, so perhaps
you had best wait for that, sir."
Philip was put out by this contretemps, but at the same time he was
relieved to find that he had a space to breathe in before the
inevitable and dreadful moment of exposure and infamy, for he had
grown afraid of his wife.
Three o'clock came in due course, but no Hilda. Philip was seriously
disturbed; but there was now no train by which she could arrive that
day, so he was forced to the conclusion that she had postponed her
departure.
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