‘Well, if he doesn’t care for a view,’ said Mr Heddegan, with the air of a highly artistic man who did.

‘O no—­I am sure he doesn’t,’ she said.  ’I can promise that you shall have the room you want.  If you would not object to go for a walk for half an hour, I could have it ready, and your things in it, and a nice tea laid in the bow-window by the time you come back?’

This proposal was deemed satisfactory by the fussy old tradesman, and they went out.  Baptista nervously conducted him in an opposite direction to her walk of the former day in other company, showing on her wan face, had he observed it, how much she was beginning to regret her sacrificial step for mending matters that morning.

She took advantage of a moment when her husband’s back was turned to inquire casually in a shop if anything had been heard of the gentleman who was sucked down in the eddy while bathing.

The shopman said, ‘Yes, his body has been washed ashore,’ and had just handed Baptista a newspaper on which she discerned the heading, ’A Schoolmaster drowned while bathing’, when her husband turned to join her.  She might have pursued the subject without raising suspicion; but it was more than flesh and blood could do, and completing a small purchase almost ran out of the shop.

‘What is your terrible hurry, mee deer?’ said Heddegan, hastening after.

‘I don’t know—­I don’t want to stay in shops,’ she gasped.

‘And we won’t,’ he said.  ’They are suffocating this weather.  Let’s go back and have some tay!’

They found the much desired apartment awaiting their entry.  It was a sort of combination bed and sitting-room, and the table was prettily spread with high tea in the bow-window, a bunch of flowers in the midst, and a best-parlour chair on each side.  Here they shared the meal by the ruddy light of the vanishing sun.  But though the view had been engaged, regardless of expense, exclusively for Baptista’s pleasure, she did not direct any keen attention out of the window.  Her gaze as often fell on the floor and walls of the room as elsewhere, and on the table as much as on either, beholding nothing at all.

But there was a change.  Opposite her seat was the door, upon which her eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a snake.  For, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such a hat—­surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat—­that had been worn by Charles.  Conviction grew to certainty when she saw a railway ticket sticking up from the band.  Charles had put the ticket there—­she had noticed the act.

Her teeth almost chattered; she murmured something incoherent.  Her husband jumped up and said, ’You are not well!  What is it?  What shall I get ‘ee?’

‘Smelling salts!’ she said, quickly and desperately; ’at the chemist’s shop you were in just now.’

He jumped up like the anxious old man that he was, caught up his own hat from a back table, and without observing the other hastened out and downstairs.