“You said within twelve months.”

“That was a bow drawn at a venture.  It may be a little sooner; it may be a little later.  But—­next week or next month—­it is coming:  it is coming!”

June smiled upon us once more; and on the afternoon of the 13th, the anniversary of our first lunch together at the Le Geyts, I was up at my work in the accident ward at St. Nathaniel’s.  “Well, the ides of June have come, Sister Wade!” I said, when I met her, parodying Caesar.

“But not yet gone,” she answered; and a profound sense of foreboding spread over her speaking face as she uttered the words.

Her oracle disquieted me.  “Why, I dined there last night,” I cried; “and all seemed exceptionally well.”

“The calm before the storm, perhaps,” she murmured.

Just at that moment I heard a boy crying in the street:  “Pall mall Gazette; ’ere y’are; speshul edishun!  Shocking tragedy at the West-end!  Orful murder!  ’Ere y’are!  Spechul Globe!  Pall Mall, extry speshul!”

A weird tremor broke over me.  I walked down into the street and bought a paper.  There it stared me in the face on the middle page:  “Tragedy at Campden Hill:  Well-known Barrister Murders his Wife.  Sensational Details.”

I looked closer and read.  It was as I feared.  The Le Geyts!  After I left their house, the night before, husband and wife must have quarrelled, no doubt over the question of the children’s schooling; and at some provoking word, as it seemed, Hugo must have snatched up a knife—­“a little ornamental Norwegian dagger,” the report said, “which happened to lie close by on the cabinet in the drawing-room,” and plunged it into his wife’s heart.  “The unhappy lady died instantaneously, by all appearances, and the dastardly crime was not discovered by the servants till eight o’clock this morning.  Mr. Le Geyt is missing.”

I rushed up with the news to Nurse Wade, who was at work in the accident ward.  She turned pale, but bent over her patient and said nothing.

“It is fearful to think!” I groaned out at last; “for us who know all—­that poor Le Geyt will be hanged for it!  Hanged for attempting to protect his children!”

“He will not be hanged,” my witch answered, with the same unquestioning confidence as ever.

“Why not?” I asked, astonished once more at this bold prediction.

She went on bandaging the arm of the patient whom she was attending.  “Because . . . he will commit suicide,” she replied, without moving a muscle.

“How do you know that?”

She stuck a steel safety-pin with deft fingers into the roll of lint.  “When I have finished my day’s work,” she answered slowly, still continuing the bandage, “I may perhaps find time to tell you.”

CHAPTER IV

THE EPISODE OF THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT COMMIT SUICIDE