The minutes followed each other,
and still the servant below stairs waited vainly for the parlor bell.
The minutes followed each other, and still she sat, tearless and quiet,
dead to the present and the future, living in the past.
The entrance of the servant, uncalled, roused her. With a heavy sigh,
the cold and secret woman folded the letter up again and addressed
herself to the interests and the duties of the passing time.
She decided the question of going or not going to Zurich, after a
very brief consideration of it. Before she had drawn her chair to the
breakfast-table she had resolved to go.
Admirably as Captain Wragge's stratagem had worked, it might have
failed--unassisted by the occurrence of the morning--to achieve this
result. The very accident against which it had been the captain's chief
anxiety to guard--the accident which had just taken place in spite of
him--was, of all the events that could have happened, the one event
which falsified every previous calculation, by directly forwarding the
main purpose of the conspiracy! If Mrs. Lecount had not obtained the
information of which she was in search before the receipt of the letter
from Zurich, the letter might have addressed her in vain.
Pages:
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774