"I hope you will," said Flossy, rather gravely, "for you look alarmingly
ill to-day. You should send for the doctor, Hubert. And now I will say
good-bye, for I have two or three other things to do to-day, besides
going to my dentist's. The cab is at the door; you need not come down."
He rose, as she really expected him to do, to see her to her cab; but a
sensation of dizziness and faintness made him sit down again and bury
his head in his hands. Considerably alarmed, Florence rang for Jenkins,
his man, and gave strict orders that the doctor should be sent for at
once. Then, feeling that she had for the present at least done her duty,
she took her leave, promising to call again before she left town that
afternoon.
Jenkins went for the doctor, as Mrs. Vane had told him to do. When that
gentleman arrived, he found Mr. Lepel stretched on a sofa in a
half-unconscious state, and declared him to be in one of the incipient
stages of brain-fever.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Mrs. Vane, on leaving her brother's lodgings, drove straight to Camden
Town. She had reasons for wishing to see Sabina Meldreth. The house was
a little difficult to find, because the street had recently been renamed
and renumbered, and Mrs. Vane was forced, to her great disgust, to
descend from the cab and make inquiries in her own person of various
frowsy-looking women standing at their own doors. "I wish I had brought
Parker," she said to herself more than once; "she would have been useful
in this kind of work. Surely Sabina has given me the right address!"
"There goes the gentleman that lodges at Mrs. Gunn's!" said one of the
frowsy-looking women at last. "I've heard tell that he was there, though
I didn't know the number. Will you tell this lady, please, sir, what
number Mrs. Gunn's is?"
The white-bearded old man who was just then passing along the street
turned to Mrs. Vane.
"I shall be very happy to show the lady the house," he said half raising
his felt hat from his white head with something like foreign politeness.
And then he and Flossy exchanged glances which were hard and keen as
steel.
He knew her well by sight; but she did not recognise him. She had seen
Westwood only once or twice in her life, and this apparently gentle old
man with the silvery hair did not harmonise with Flossy's impressions of
the Beechfield poacher. Nevertheless she was suspicious enough to
remember that all things were possible; and she made a mental note of
his dark eyes and eyebrows, the latter being a little out of keeping
with his very white hair. As a matter of fact, Westwood had gone too far
in selecting his disguise; a more ordinary slightly-grizzled wig would
have suited his general appearance better. The _perruquier_--an artist
in his way--to whom he had applied considered picturesque effect an
object not to be overlooked; and Mr. Reuben Dare was accordingly a
rather too strikingly picturesque individual to be anything but
theatrical in air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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