Next morning he received the news that she was better. It was again Harry who wrote, but Ethel had added at the foot of the letter the words, ‘Don’t be anxious, Gerald dearest. I shall soon be quite well.’ A day later she was in much the same state. Gerald would wait no longer, but would go on Monday to Helmsbury. On the evening of Saturday, March the -th, 187-, he was going into Hall--he was actually halfway up the length of the Hall--when a telegram was put into his hand. It was in these words: ‘Come at once. Harry.’ He turned and left the Hall. His heart was as lead. Nobody in the Hall knew why he turned back. One or two of the fellows of the college who were sitting at dinner noticed his disappearance; they supposed he had forgotten something, perhaps an invitation to dinner in another college. But the servant who had handed him the telegram, and had looked at him while he read it, remarked that he was afraid Mr. Eversley had got some bad news. Gerald Eversley, after leaving the Hall, rushed to his rooms. He flung his cap and gown on the sofa. The sense of hunger was dead within him. Hastily he began putting a few clothes--he hardly knew what they were--into a small travelling-bag. Stopping himself in the act of packing, he seized his hat, ran across the grass plot to the porter’s lodge, and told the underporter to order a fly at once. Then he looked at the table of trains. There would be a train starting for London in three-quarters of an hour. Whether he could get on to Helmsbury before next morning he did not stay to ask. The telegram left room for the worst fears; it did not say that Ethel was still alive. He would go to London and take his chance. In a few minutes his packing was finished, and he stood under the great gateway of the college, awaiting the fly. ‘Is there anything wrong, sir?’ said the underporter, impressed by his manner. ‘I hope you....’ But here he caught sight of Gerald’s face. There was that in his face which forbade words. O the horror of that wintry night-journey! The sky was flecked with dark ominous clouds. The moon looked gibbous. It was bitterly cold. Here and there large patches of snow still lay on the ground. Gerald gazed at them now and again through the frozen window-pane. But for the most part he sat in a corner of the railway carriage, wrapped in his rug, his head bent forward and buried in his hands. O darkness of dread fear! when the worst is not known. Nothing is so awful, so appalling as that. It was near midnight when he reached London. The train was an hour late. No hope of proceeding to Helmsbury that night. But he drove across London. He would sleep, if sleep he could and must, as near as might be to his beloved.