Actors -- Fiction; Adultery -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Staffordshire (England) -- Fiction
'Like a man filled with disquiet,' the lady said, and she watched the burly
actor hurrying up the pier. 'Is this woman coming to meet him?' she asked
herself as Dick hurried away still faster, for in the distance the woman
coming down the pier seemed to him like his wife, and if Kate caught him
talking to a woman on the pier all chance of doing any business with his
new acquaintance would be at an end. But the woman who had just passed him
by was not Kate, and the thought crossed his mind that he might return to
his new acquaintance with safety. But on the whole it seemed to him better
to wait until to-morrow. To-morrow he would find out all about her. 'Her
name,' he said, and taking the card out of his pocket he read: 'Mrs.
Forest, Mother Superior of the Yarmouth Convent, Alexandra Hotel,
Hastings.' 'Mother Superior of a Convent! I should never have thought it.
But if she is a nun, why isn't she in a habit? Classical cartoons and
nunneries. I think this time I've hit upon a strange specimen, one of the
strangest I've ever met, which is saying a great deal, for I've met with a
good few in my time. It will be better to tear up her card, for if Kate
should find it----'
And then, dismissing Mrs. Forest from his mind, he wondered if he should
find Kate drunk or sober. 'Quite sober,' he said to himself as soon as he
crossed the threshold; and in the best of humours his wife greeted him, and
taking his arm they went down to the pier and gave an entertainment that
was appreciated by a fairly large audience.
'Why didn't she ask me to come to her at five to-day?' he asked himself as
he returned home with his wife. 'She may fall through my fingers,' and he
would have gone straight away to Mrs. Forest, if he had been able to rid
himself of Kate.
'You'll take me out to tea, Dick?' she said, and to keep her sober he took
her to tea. For the nonce Kate drunk would have suited him better than Kate
sober, and he dared not go down to the pier next morning in search of Mrs.
Forest, it being more than likely that Kate might take it into her head to
sun herself on the pier, so he decided to wait; the pier was too dangerous.
If he weren't interrupted by Kate the directors might see them together,
and they might know Mrs. Forest and tell her that he was a married man. No,
he'd just keep his appointment with her at five. But to get rid of Kate
required a deep plan. It was laid and succeeded, and at five he arrived at
the Alexandra Hotel.
'Is Mrs. Forest in?'
The hall porter told the page boy to take Mr. Lennox up to Mrs. Forest's
rooms.
'All this smells money,' Dick said to himself in the lift.
The page boy threw open the door, and after walking through a long corridor
the boy knocked at a door, and Dick walked into a red twilight in which he
caught sight of a green dress in a distant corner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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