“No.  Lady Ogram has been carried upstairs.”

“Then I’ll go in and wait.”

He watched the clock for another half hour, then the door opened, and a servant brought him information that Lady Ogram remained in the same unconscious state.

“I will call this evening to make inquiry,” said Lashmar, and thereupon left the house.

Reaching his hotel at Hollingford, he ordered a meal and ate heartily.  Then he stepped over to the office of the Express, and made known to Breakspeare the fact of Lady Ogram’s illness; they discussed the probabilities with much freedom, Breakspeare remarking how add it would be if Lady Ogram so soon followed her old enemy.  At about nine o’clock in the evening, Dyce inquired at Rivenoak lodge:  he learnt that there was still no change whatever in the patient’s condition; Dr. Baldwin remained in the house.  In spite of his anxious thoughts, Dyce slept particularly well.  Immediately after breakfast, he drove again to Rivenoak, and had no sooner alighted from the cab than he saw that the blinds were down at the lodge windows.  Lady Ogram, he learnt, had died between two and three o’clock.

He dismissed his vehicle, and walked along the roads skirting the wall of the park.  Now, indeed, was his life’s critical moment.  How long must elapse before he could know the contents of Lady Ogram’s will?  In a very short time he would have need of money; he had been disbursing freely, and could not face the responsibilities of the election, without assurance that his finances would soon be on a satisfactory footing.  He thought nervously of Constance Bride, more nervously still of May Tomalin.  Constance’s position was doubtless secure; she would enter upon the “trust” of which so much had been said; but what was her state of mind with regard to him?  Had not the consent to marry him simply been forced from her?  May, who was now possessor of a great fortune, might perchance forget yesterday’s turmoil, and be willing to renew their tender relations; he felt such a thing to be by no means impossible.  Meanwhile, ignorance would keep him in a most perplexing and embarrassing position.  The Amyses, who knew nothing of the rupture of his ostensible engagement, would be surprised if he did not call upon Miss Bride, yet it behooved him, for the present, to hold aloof from both the girls, not to compromise his future chances with either of them.  The dark possibility that neither one nor the other would come to his relief, he resolutely kept out of mind; that would be sheer ruin, and a certain buoyancy of heart assured him that he had no such catastrophe to fear.  Prudence only was required; perhaps in less than a week all his anxieties would be over, for once and all.

He decided to call, this afternoon, upon Lady Amys.  The interview would direct his future behaviour.

It was the day of Robb’s funeral, and he had meant to absent himself from Hollingford.  He remained in his private sitting-room at the Saracen’s Head, wrote many letters, and tried to read.  At four o’clock he went out to Rivenoak, only to learn that Lady Amys could receive no one.  He left a card.  After all, perhaps this was the simplest and best way out of his difficulty.