A man knows the voice of his love above all. The voice that I had heard in that adjoining room was, to the best of my belief, that of Ethelwynn.
With a resolution to probe this mystery slowly, and without unseemly haste, I dropped the subject, and commenced to ask his advice regarding the complicated case of Lady Twickenham. The history of it, and the directions he gave can serve no purpose if written here; therefore suffice it to say that I remained to dinner and caught the nine o'clock express back to London.
While at dinner, a meal served in that severe style which characterised the austere old man's daily life, I commenced to talk of the antics of insane persons and their extraordinary antipathies, but quickly discerned that he had neither intention nor desire to speak of them. He replied in those snappy monosyllables which told me plainly that the subject was distasteful to him, and when I bade him good-bye and drove to the station I was more puzzled than ever by his strange behaviour. He was eccentric, it was true; but I knew all his little odd ways, the eccentricity of genius, and could plainly see that his recent indisposition, which had prevented him from attending at Harley Street, was due to nerves rather than to a chill.
The trains from Brighton to London on Sunday evenings are always crowded, mainly by business people compelled to return to town in readiness for the toil of the coming week. Week-end trippers and day excursionists fill the compartments to overflowing, whether it be chilly spring or blazing summer, for Brighton is ever popular with the jaded Londoner who is enabled to "run down" without fatigue, and get a cheap health-giving sea-breeze for a few hours after the busy turmoil of the Metropolis.
On this Sunday night it was no exception. The first-class compartment was crowded, mostly be it said, by third-class passengers who had "tipped" the guard, and when we had started I noticed in the far corner opposite me a pale-faced young girl of about twenty or so, plainly dressed in shabby black. She was evidently a third-class passenger, and the guard, taking compassion upon her fragile form in the mad rush for seats, had put her into our carriage. She was not good-looking, indeed rather plain; her countenance wearing a sad, pre-occupied expression as she leaned her chin upon her hand and gazed out upon the lights of the town we were leaving.