Sandon was a large enough place to have a grocer’s and druggist’s shop in it, and thither the Count went to write his prescription and to get the medicine made up.  He brought it back himself, and told Mrs. Clements that the medicine was a powerful stimulant, and that it would certainly give Anne strength to get up and bear the fatigue of a journey to London of only a few hours.  The remedy was to be administered at stated times on that day and on the day after.  On the third day she would be well enough to travel, and he arranged to meet Mrs. Clements at the Blackwater station, and to see them off by the mid-day train.  If they did not appear he would assume that Anne was worse, and would proceed at once to the cottage.

As events turned out, no such emergency as this occurred.

This medicine had an extraordinary effect on Anne, and the good results of it were helped by the assurance Mrs. Clements could now give her that she would soon see Lady Glyde in London.  At the appointed day and time (when they had not been quite so long as a week in Hampshire altogether), they arrived at the station.  The Count was waiting there for them, and was talking to an elderly lady, who appeared to be going to travel by the train to London also.  He most kindly assisted them, and put them into the carriage himself, begging Mrs. Clements not to forget to send her address to Lady Glyde.  The elderly lady did not travel in the same compartment, and they did not notice what became of her on reaching the London terminus.  Mrs. Clements secured respectable lodgings in a quiet neighbourhood, and then wrote, as she had engaged to do, to inform Lady Glyde of the address.

A little more than a fortnight passed, and no answer came.

At the end of that time a lady (the same elderly lady whom they had seen at the station) called in a cab, and said that she came from Lady Glyde, who was then at an hotel in London, and who wished to see Mrs. Clements, for the purpose of arranging a future interview with Anne.  Mrs. Clements expressed her willingness (Anne being present at the time, and entreating her to do so) to forward the object in view, especially as she was not required to be away from the house for more than half an hour at the most.  She and the elderly lady (clearly Madame Fosco) then left in the cab.  The lady stopped the cab, after it had driven some distance, at a shop before they got to the hotel, and begged Mrs. Clements to wait for her for a few minutes while she made a purchase that had been forgotten.  She never appeared again.

After waiting some time Mrs. Clements became alarmed, and ordered the cabman to drive back to her lodgings.  When she got there, after an absence of rather more than half an hour, Anne was gone.