CHAPTER THE FORTY-NINTH.

THE NIGHT.

ON leaving Lady Lundie’s house, Geoffrey called the first empty cab that passed him.  He opened the door, and signed to Anne to enter the vehicle.  She obeyed him mechanically.  He placed himself on the seat opposite to her, and told the man to drive to Fulham.

The cab started on its journey; husband and wife preserving absolute silence.  Anne laid her head back wearily, and closed her eyes.  Her strength had broken down under the effort which had sustained her from the beginning to the end of the inquiry.  Her power of thinking was gone.  She felt nothing, knew nothing, feared nothing.  Half in faintness, half in slumber, she had lost all sense of her own terrible position before the first five minutes of the journey to Fulham had come to an end.

Sitting opposite to her, savagely self-concentrated in his own thoughts, Geoffrey roused himself on a sudden.  An idea had sprung to life in his sluggish brain.  He put his head out of the window of the cab, and directed the driver to turn back, and go to an hotel near the Great Northern Railway.

Resuming his seat, he looked furtively at Anne.  She neither moved nor opened her eyes—­she was, to all appearance, unconscious of what had happened.  He observed her attentively.  Was she really ill?  Was the time coming when he would be freed from her?  He pondered over that question—­watching her closely.  Little by little the vile hope in him slowly died away, and a vile suspicion took its place.  What, if this appearance of illness was a pretense?  What, if she was waiting to throw him off his guard, and escape from him at the first opportunity?  He put his head out of the window again, and gave another order to the driver.  The cab diverged from the direct route, and stopped at a public house in Holborn, kept (under an assumed name) by Perry the trainer.

Geoffrey wrote a line in pencil on his card, and sent it into the house by the driver.  After waiting some minutes, a lad appeared and touched his hat.  Geoffrey spoke to him, out of the window, in an under-tone.  The lad took his place on the box by the driver.  The cab turned back, and took the road to the hotel near the Great Northern Railway.

Arrived at the place, Geoffrey posted the lad close at the door of the cab, and pointed to Anne, still reclining with closed eyes; still, as it seemed, too weary to lift her head, too faint to notice any thing that happened.  “If she attempts to get out, stop her, and send for me.”  With those parting directions he entered the hotel, and asked for Mr. Moy.

Mr. Moy was in the house; he had just returned from Portland Place.  He rose, and bowed coldly, when Geoffrey was shown into his sitting-room.

“What is your business with me?” he asked.

“I’ve had a notion come into my head,” said Geoffrey.  “And I want to speak to you about it directly.”