The Impending Sword: A Novel (Vol. 1 of 3)Yates, Edmund
General
The Impending Sword: A Novel (Vol. 1 of 3)
Yates, Edmund
Fiction
Rather late on the same evening a four-wheeled cab drove up at the
door of No. 192 Queen-street, Mayfair. Two females occupied the
vehicle, one of whom was presumably, by her dress and appearance, a
respectable upper servant, perhaps a lady's maid. Her dress was plain,
but suitable to such an assumption, and she was closely veiled.
Leaving her companion, who was somewhat similarly attired, in the cab,
this person rang the bell and requested to see the mistress of the
house. A respectable-looking middle-aged woman, with a countenance
exhibiting that peculiar mixture of conventional complacency and
ever-present anxiety which characterises the London lodging-house
keeper, presented herself in answer to this request, and begged that
the lady would step into her little room. The visitor explained at
once, to avoid disappointing the expectation which was very plainly
written in the landlady's anxious face, that she had not come to
engage rooms, that she had merely called to make inquiry. This
announcement was met with no decrease of civility, and the invitation
to walk in was repeated.
It then appeared that the visitor had called to inquire about the
lodger who had recently left No. 192, and the interview between the
two women very rapidly assumed the aspect of a gossiping chat. Mrs.
Watts was very sorry to part with her lodger, 'which he was quite the
gentleman,' and had gone away with his luggage in a cab, and himself
in a hansom. There was a deal of luggage; them big boxes as come from
New York, and looks like ladies' boxes mostly. Mrs. Watts could not
say where he had gone to--certainly she had seen the labels; but they
were two brass labels slipped into the ticket grooves, with New York
in black letters upon the metal.
'Was there any name upon the trunks?' asked the visitor.
Mrs. Watts was quite sure there was no name anywhere, nor upon the
strapped-up package of railway rugs, canes, and umbrellas.
'Did Mrs. Watts,' asked the visitor, 'entertain any doubt whatever
upon the subject?'
'He had left in the evening, and she had heard the driver of the
hansom directed to Euston Station, to catch the Liverpool mail.'
This was conclusive, and the visitor, taking a polite leave of Mrs.
Watts, got into the cab and drove home without exchanging a single
word with her companion.
'He is mad,' thought Miss Montressor during that silent drive, and
there was a strange complacency in her mind at this conclusion--'he is
stark mad with jealousy--who would have thought it? Well, he will get
over it, I suppose, and it don't matter to me.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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