But the letter was nowhere to be seen. Worn out with anxiety, he went back to The Maples and flung himself into a chair. To leave the place with that damning confession of his guilt he knew not where, he felt was an impossibility. A dull kind of despair seized upon him, and held him in complete thrall. He crawled up to bed at last, but not to sleep. All night he tortured himself by imagining the discovery of the confession by some one who would either carry it to the police station or to Olivia. If the person who found it followed the former course, then all was over with him, and flight would be useless. Before he could reach London--now--the telegraph would be in operation, and detectives would be waiting for him at every station. If, on the other hand, it should be carried to Olivia--well, she would, she must send for him, and he would have to face a new phase of the danger. He went downstairs the next morning casting restless, suspicious glances over the balustrade, expecting to see a policeman in the hall; but as the day passed and no one came--no detective, and no message from Olivia--his spirits rose somewhat. “I may have dropped it as I stood leaning against the railing; it must have come out with my handkerchief when I saw----” He stopped with a shudder. “Perhaps luck is going to stand by me still, and the cursed thing has been blown into the wood and is hidden under the bracken. If so”--he got up with renewed energy--“if so, let it lie there until after the trial, after I come back. He will be put out of the way then!” This view of the case was so encouraging that he dwelt on it, repeating it over and over again, and then went upstairs and secretly began to make preparations for his departure. He prepared the way by reading one of his letters, while the butler was in the room, and uttering exclamations of impatience and annoyance. “Tut, tut! I shall have to go to town, I’m afraid,” he said. “Yes, sir,” said the butler, as he removed the untouched breakfast. “Yes. But I’m not certain. Let me see, what are the trains?” “There’s the one at midday--you have just lost the morning one, sir--and the evening train.” Bartley Bradstone thought rapidly. It was just possible that even now, or later in the morning, some one might pick up the letter and take it to Olivia, and he might hear from her. He would wait until the evening train. He passed the day going over his papers and letters, destroying some and placing the others in the safe. He had not opened it since the wedding day, on which he had taken out the revolver, and he stood before it, looking into its depths with a dull apathy. It was difficult to realize that he--Bartley Bradstone--was--a murderer; that but for the noble heroism and self-sacrifice of the man he hated most in the world, he would at that moment be in the cell, instead of Faradeane, awaiting his trial!