"But you will surely return home, Richard, after what has happened?"
said Harry, thinking of his mother's funeral.
"The dead can wait," returned he, solemnly. "Go you back to town. In
three days' time, if you do not hear from me, come down to Gethin with
Charles and Agnes."
"But I dare not, unless my husband send for me."
"He _will_ send for you," said Richard, solemnly; "or others will in his
behalf."
Without one word or sign of farewell he suddenly rushed by her, and was
gone. A carriage stood at the front-door of the hotel, which had just
returned from taking a bride and bridegroom to the railway station, and
she saw him hurry into it.
"Fast! fast!" she heard him cry, through the open window; and then he
was whirled away.
CHAPTER XLVI.
CURTIUS.
Richard had many subjects for thought to beguile his lonely way to
Gethin, but one was paramount, and absorbed the rest, though he strove
to dismiss it all he could.
He endeavored to think of his dead mother. His heart was full of her
patient love and weary, childless life; but her portrait faded from his
mind like a dissolving view, and in its place stood that of Solomon Coe,
haggard, emaciated, hideous. Still less could he think of Harry and her
son, between whom and himself this spectre of the unhappy man rose up at
once, summoned by the thought of them, as by a spell.
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