Filled suddenly with that heart-rending longing for the sight and touch of the loved one again that is so unendurable in the first hours of separation, I thought I would do that, and I left the half-filled trunk and went downstairs to the hall.
The two maids were standing there waiting, and they stared at me as I passed and put on my hat.
"Please, sir, are you ready for breakfast? It's gone half-past ten."
"No," I said shortly. "I am going out first."
"Will Mrs. Lonsdale be coming down, sir?"
"No, Mrs. Lonsdale has gone out already," I answered, and went on through the door.
I didn't care what they thought. When one is in great pain, physical or mental, nothing seems to matter except that pain.
I walked fast to the station, about a mile distant, and made enquiries as discreetly as I could.
"No," was the unanimous answer. Mrs. Lonsdale had certainly not left there by any train that morning, nor been there at all, nor hired a fly from there. They were all quite sure of that.
She was well known at the station, so it seemed improbable she could have been there unobserved.
There was another station up the line six miles distant. She might easily have walked to that to avoid notice.
I took a fly, and drove to the other station, but here Viola was not known personally, and though I described her, and was assured she had not been seen there, it was indefinite and uncertain information that settled nothing.
She might have gone from there to town by an early train unnoticed, or she might have gone down the line to another country place to elude me. I could tell nothing.
Feeling sick and dispirited, I drove back to the station and then walked on to the house.
When I went upstairs the room was in disorder just as I had left it. As I entered the bed caught my eye, the pillow her head had so lately crushed, and there beside it the delicate garment she had been wearing a few hours ago.
An immense, a devastating sense of loss came over me. A feeling of suffering so intense and so vast, it seemed to crush me beneath it physically as well as mentally.
I sank down in the armchair, laid my head back and closed my eyes. I ceased to think any more, I was unconscious of anything except that sense of intense suffering.