’No, sir.  I took the dressing-bag down to the cab, and the cabman was told to drive to the post-office.’

‘Very well.  That will do.’

‘Shall you dine at home, sir?’

‘Dine?  No.’

Sibyl gone away for the night?  Where could she have gone to?  He began to look about for the telegram she had received; it might be lying somewhere, and possibly would explain her departure.  In the waste-paper basket he found the torn envelope lying at the top; but the despatch itself was not to be discovered.

Gone for the night? and just when he was supposed to have left town?  The cabman told to drive to the post-office?  This might be for the purpose of despatching a reply.  Yet no; the reply would have been written at once and sent by the messenger in the usual way.  Unless —­ unless Sibyl, for some reason, preferred to send the message more privately?  Or again, she might not care to let the servant know whither the cab was really to convey her.

Sheer madness, all this.  Had not Sibyl fifty legitimate ways of spending a night from home?  Yet there was the fact that she had never before done so unexpectedly.  Never before ——?

He looked at his watch; half-past six.  He rang the bell again.

‘Has any one called since Mrs. Carnaby left home?’

‘Yes, sir; there have been three calls.  Mrs. Rolfe ——­’

‘Mrs. Rolfe?’

’Yes, sir.  She seemed very disappointed.  I told her Mrs. Carnaby would not be back tonight.’

‘And the others?’

Two persons of no account.  Hugh dismissed them, and the servant, with a wave of the hand.

He felt a faintness such as accompanies extreme hunger, but had no inclination for food.  The whisky bottle was a natural resource; a tumbler of right Scotch restored his circulation, and in a few minutes gave him a raging appetite.  He could not eat here; but eat he must, and that quickly.  Seizing his hat, he ran down the stairs, hailed a hansom, and drove to the nearest restaurant he could think of.

After eating without knowledge of the viands, and drinking a bottle of claret in like unconsciousness, he smoked for half an hour, his eyes vacantly set, his limbs lax and heavy, as though in the torpor of difficult digestion.  When the cigar was finished, he roused himself, looked at the time, and asked for a railway guide.  There was a train to Wimbledon at ten minutes past eight; he might possibly catch it.  Starting into sudden activity, he hastily left the restaurant, and reached Waterloo Station with not a moment to spare.

At Wimbledon he took a cab, and was driven up the hill.  Under a clouded sky, dusk had already changed to darkness; the evening was warm and still.  Impatient with what he thought the slow progress of the vehicle, Hugh sat with his body bent forward, straining as did the horse, on which his eyes were fixed, and perspiring in the imaginary effort.  The address he had given was Mrs. Fenimore’s; but when he drew near he signalled to the driver:  ‘Stop at the gate.  Don’t drive up.’