He looked round at her. Alma had entered the study as usual, and was taking off her gloves; but the effort of supporting herself seemed too great, she trembled towards the nearest chair, and affected to laugh at her feebleness as she sank down.

'Rest will come _after_,' she said, in such a voice as sounds from a parched and quivering throat.

'I'll take good care of that,' Harvey remarked. 'To look at you is almost enough to make me play the brutal husband, and say that I'll be hanged if you go out tomorrow at all.'

She laughed--a ghostly merriment.

'Where have you been?'

'Oh, at several places. I met Mr. Carnaby at lunch,' she added quickly.

'He told me he was going somewhere--I forget--oh, to Weymouth, to see Mrs. Larkfield.'

Harvey was watching her, and paid little attention to the news.

'Do you know, it wouldn't much surprise me if you couldn't get up tomorrow morning, let alone play at a concert. Well, I won't keep you talking. Go to bed.'

'Yes.'

She rose, but instead of turning to the door, moved towards where Harvey was sitting.

'Don't be angry with me,' she murmured in a shamefaced way. 'It wasn't very wise--I've over-excited myself but I shall be all right tomorrow; and afterwards I'll behave more sensibly--I promise----'

He nodded; but Alma bent over him, and touched his forehead with her lips.

'You're in a fever, I suppose you know?'

'I shall be all right tomorrow. Goodnight, dear.'

In town, this morning, she had called at a chemist's, and purchased a little bottle of something in repute for fashionable disorder of the nerves. Before lying down she took the prescribed dose, though with small hope that it would help her to a blessed unconsciousness. Another thing she did which had not occurred to her for many a night: she knelt by the bedside, and half thought, half whispered through tearless sobs, a pet.i.tion not learnt from any book, a strange half-heathen blending of prayer for moral strength, and entreaty for success in a worldly desire. Her mind shook perilously in its balance. It was well for Alma that the fashionable prescription did not fail her. In the moment of despair, when she had turned and turned again upon her pillow, haunted by a vision in the darkness, tortured by the never-ending echo of a dreadful voice, there fell upon her a sudden quiet; her brain was soothed by a lulling air from dreamland; her limbs relaxed, and forgot their aching weariness; she sighed and slept.

'I am much better this morning,' she said at breakfast. 'Not a trace of fever--no headache.'

'And a face the colour of the table-cloth,' added Harvey.

There was a letter from Mrs. Frothingham, conveying good wishes not very fervently expressed. She had decided not to come up for the concert, feeling that the excitement would be too much for her; but Alma suspected another reason.

She had not asked her husband whether he meant to have a seat in Prince's Hall this afternoon; she still waited for him to speak about it. After breakfast he asked her when she would start for town. At noon, she replied. Every arrangement had been completed; it would be enough if she reached the Hall half an hour before the time of the recital, and after a light luncheon at a neighbouring restaurant.

'Then we may as well go together,' said her husband.

'You mean to come, then?' she asked dreamily.

'I shall go in at the last moment--a seat at the back.'

Anything but inclined for conversation, Alma acquiesced. For the next hour or two she kept in solitude, occasionally touching her violin, but always recurring to an absent mood, a troubled reverie. She could not fix her thoughts upon the trial that was before her. In a vague way she feared it; but another fear, at times amounting to dread, dimmed the day's event into insignificance. The morning's newspapers were before her, sent, no doubt, by Dymes's direction, and she mused over the eye-attracting announcements of her debut. 'Mrs. Harvey Rolfe's First Violin Recital, Prince's Hall, this afternoon, at 3.' It gave her no more gratification than if the name had been that of a stranger.

The world had grown as unreal as a nightmare. People came before her mind, people the most intimately known, and she seemed but faintly to recognise them. They were all so much changed since yesterday. Their relations to each other and to her were altered, confused. Scarce one of them she could regard without apprehension or perplexity.

What faces would show before her when she advanced upon the platform?

Would she behold Sibyl, or Hugh Carnaby, or Cyrus Redgrave? Their presence would all but convince her that she had pa.s.sed some hours of yesterday in delirium. They might be present; for was not she--she herself--about to step forward and play in public? Their absence--what would it mean? Where were they at this moment? What had happened in the life of each since last she saw them?

When it was time to begin to dress, she undertook the task with effort, with repugnance. She would have chosen to sit here, in a drowsy idleness, and let the hours go by. On her table stood the little vial with its draught of oblivion. Oh to drink of it again, and to lay her head upon the pillow and outsleep the day!

Nevertheless, when she had exerted herself, and was clad in the fresh garments of spring, the mirror came to her help. She was pale yet; but pallor lends distinction to features that are not commonplace, and no remark of man or woman had ever caused her to suspect that her face was ordinary. She posed before the gla.s.s, holding her violin, and the picture seemed so effective that she began to regain courage. A dreadful thing had happened--perhaps more dreadful than she durst imagine--but her own part in it was nothing worse than folly and misfortune. She had no irreparable sin to hide. Her moment of supreme peril was past, and would not return. If now she could but brace her nerves, and pa.s.s successfully through the ordeal of the next few hours, the victory for which she had striven so hard, and had risked so much, would at length be won. Everything dark and doubtful she must try to forget. Success would give her new strength; to fail, under any circ.u.mstances ignominious, would at this crisis of her life be a disaster fraught with manifold and intolerable shame.

She played a few notes. Her hand was steady once more; she felt her confidence revive. Whenever she had performed before an audience, it had always seemed to her that she must inevitably break down; yet at the last minute came power and self-control. So it would be today. The greater the demand upon her, so much the surer her responsive energy.

She would not see faces. When all was over, let the news be disclosed, the worst that might be waiting; between now and then lay an infinity of time.

So, when she went downstairs to meet Harvey, the change in her appearance surprised him. He had expected a bloodless countenance, a tremulous step; but Alma came towards him with the confident carriage of an earlier day, with her smile of superiority, her look that invited or demanded admiration.

'Well? You won't be ashamed of me?'

'To tell the truth,' said Harvey, 'I was going because I feared someone would have to look after you in the middle of the affair. If there's no danger of that, I think I shall not go into the place at all.'

'Why?'

'I don't care for it. I prefer to hear you play in private.'

'You needn't have the least fear for me,' said Alma loftily.

'Very well. We'll lunch together, as we arranged, and I'll be at the door with a cab for you after the people have gone.'

'Why should you trouble?'

'I had rather, if you don't mind.'

They drove from Baker Street to the Hall, where Alma alighted for a minute to leave her instrument, and thence to a restaurant not far away. Alma felt no appet.i.te, but the necessity of supporting her strength obliged her to choose some suitable refreshment. When their order had been given, Harvey laid his hand upon an evening newspaper, just arrived, which the waiter had thrown on to the next table. He opened it, not with any intention of reading, but because he had no mind to talk; Alma's name, exhibited in staring letters at the entrance of the public building, had oppressed him with a sense of degradation; he felt ign.o.ble, much as a man might feel who had consented to his own dishonour. As his eyes wandered over the freshly-printed sheet, they were arrested by a couple of bold headlines: 'Sensational Affair at Wimbledon--Mysterious Death of a Gentleman'. He read the paragraph, and turned to Alma with a face of amazement.

'Look there--read that----'

Alma took the paper. She had an instantaneous foreboding of what she was to see; her heart stood still, and her eyes dazzled, but at length she read. On the previous evening (said the report), a gentleman residing at Wimbledon, and well known in fashionable circles, Mr. Cyrus Redgrave, had met his death under very strange and startling circ.u.mstances. Only a few particulars could as yet be made public; but it appeared that, about nine o'clock in the evening, a medical man had been hastily summoned to Mr. Redgrave's house, and found that gentleman lying dead in a room that opened upon the garden. There was present another person, a friend of the deceased (name not mentioned), who made a statement to the effect that, in consequence of a sudden quarrel, he had struck Mr. Redgrave with his fist, knocking him down, and, as it proved, killing him on the spot. Up to the present moment no further details were obtainable, but it was believed that the self-accused a.s.sailant had put himself in communication with the police. There was a rumour, too, which might or might not have any significance, that Mr.

Redgrave's housekeeper had suddenly left the house and could not be traced.

'Dead?'

The word fell from her lips involuntarily.

'And who killed him?' said Harvey, just above his breath.

'It isn't known--there's no name----'

'No. But I had a sudden thought. Absurd--impossible----'

As Harvey whispered the words, a waiter drew near with the luncheon. It was arranged upon the table, but lay there disregarded. Alma took up the newspaper again. In a moment she leaned towards her husband.

'What did you think?'

'Nothing--don't talk about it.'