He opened the doors, entered a step or two, and came
back almost instantly with a rigid face. “My
good God, the gentleman in bed is dead! I think
he has been hurt with a knife—a lot of blood
had run down upon the floor!”
The alarm was soon given, and the house which had
lately been so quiet resounded with the tramp of many
footsteps, a surgeon among the rest. The wound
was small, but the point of the blade had touched
the heart of the victim, who lay on his back, pale,
fixed, dead, as if he had scarcely moved after the
infliction of the blow. In a quarter of an hour
the news that a gentleman who was a temporary visitor
to the town had been stabbed in his bed, spread through
every street and villa of the popular watering-place.
Meanwhile Angel Clare had walked automatically along
the way by which he had come, and, entering his hotel,
sat down over the breakfast, staring at nothingness.
He went on eating and drinking unconsciously till
on a sudden he demanded his bill; having paid which,
he took his dressing-bag in his hand, the only luggage
he had brought with him, and went out.
At the moment of his departure a telegram was handed
to him—a few words from his mother, stating
that they were glad to know his address, and informing
him that his brother Cuthbert had proposed to and
been accepted by Mercy Chant.
Clare crumpled up the paper and followed the route
to the station; reaching it, he found that there would
be no train leaving for an hour and more. He
sat down to wait, and having waited a quarter of an
hour felt that he could wait there no longer.
Broken in heart and numbed, he had nothing to hurry
for; but he wished to get out of a town which had
been the scene of such an experience, and turned to
walk to the first station onward, and let the train
pick him up there.
The highway that he followed was open, and at a little
distance dipped into a valley, across which it could
be seen running from edge to edge. He had traversed
the greater part of this depression, and was climbing
the western acclivity when, pausing for breath, he
unconsciously looked back. Why he did so he could
not say, but something seemed to impel him to the
act. The tape-like surface of the road diminished
in his rear as far as he could see, and as he gazed
a moving spot intruded on the white vacuity of its
perspective.
It was a human figure running. Clare waited,
with a dim sense that somebody was trying to overtake
him.
The form descending the incline was a woman’s,
yet so entirely was his mind blinded to the idea of
his wife’s following him that even when she
came nearer he did not recognize her under the totally
changed attire in which he now beheld her. It
was not till she was quite close that he could believe
her to be Tess.
“I saw you—turn away from the station—just
before I got there—and I have been following
you all this way!”
