“The moment for which I had waited so long had at last come. I had my enemies within my power. Together they could protect each other, but singly they were at my mercy. I did not act, however, with undue precipitation. My plans were already formed. There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him. I had my plans arranged by which I should have the opportunity of making the man who had wronged me understand that his old sin had found him out. It chanced that some days before a gentleman who had been engaged in looking over some houses in the Brixton Road had dropped the key of one of them in my carriage. It was claimed that same evening, and returned; but in the interval I had taken a moulding of it, and had a duplicate constructed. By means of this I had access to at least one spot in this great city where I could rely upon being free from interruption. How to get Drebber to that house was the difficult problem which I had now to solve.

“He walked down the road and went into one or two liquor shops, staying for nearly half an hour in the last of them. When he came came out. he staggered in his walk, and was evidently pretty well on. There was a hansom just in front of me, and he hailed it. I followed it so close that the nose of my horse was within a yard of his driver the whole way. We rattled across Waterloo Bridge and through miles of streets, until, to my astonishment, we found ourselves back in the terrace in which he had boarded. I could not imagine what his intention was in returning there; but I went on and pulled up my cab a hundred yards or so from the house. He entered it, and his hansom drove away. Give me a glass of water. if you please. My mouth gets dry with the talking.”

I handed him the glass, and he drank it down.

“That’s better,” he said. “Well, I waited tor a quarter of an hour, or more, when suddenly there came a noise like people struggling inside the house. Next moment the door was flung open and two men appeared, one of whom was Drebber, and the other was a young chap whom I had never seen before. This fellow had Drebber by the collar, and when they came to the head of the steps he gave him a shove and a kick which sent him half across the road. ‘You hound!’ he cried, shaking his stick at him: ‘I’ll teach you to insult an honest girl!’ He was so hot that I think he would have thrashed Drebber with his cudgel. only that the cur staggered away down the road as fast as his legs would carry him. He ran as far as the corner, and then seeing my cab, he hailed me and jumped in. ‘Drive me to Halliday’s Private Hotel,’ said he.

“When I had him fairly inside my cab, my heart jumped so with joy that I feared lest at this last moment my aneurism might go wrong. I drove along slowly, weighing in my own mind what it was best to do. I might take him right out into the country, and there in some deserted lane have my last interview with him. I had almost decided upon this, when he solved the problem for me. The craze for drink had seized him again, and he ordered me to pull up outside a gin palace. He went in, leaving word that I should wait for him. There he remained until closing time. and when he came out he was so far gone that I knew the game was in my own hands.

But he was very kind. He gave her the best things at the table, he had a bottle of slightly sweet, delicious golden wine brought out for dinner, knowing she would prefer it to the burgundy. She felt herself esteemed, needed almost.

As they took coffee in the library, there was a soft, very soft knocking at the door. He started, and called ‘Come in.’ The timbre of his voice, like something vibrating at high pitch, unnerved Gudrun. A nurse in white entered, half hovering in the doorway like a shadow. She was very good–looking, but strangely enough, shy and self–mistrusting.

‘The doctor would like to speak to you, Mr Crich,’ she said, in her low, discreet voice.

‘The doctor!’ he said, starting up. ‘Where is he?’

‘He is in the dining–room.’

‘Tell him I’m coming.’

He drank up his coffee, and followed the nurse, who had dissolved like a shadow.

‘Which nurse was that?’ asked Gudrun.

‘Miss Inglis—I like her best,’ replied Winifred.

After a while Gerald came back, looking absorbed by his own thoughts, and having some of that tension and abstraction which is seen in a slightly drunken man. He did not say what the doctor had wanted him for, but stood before the fire, with his hands behind his back, and his face open and as if rapt. Not that he was really thinking—he was only arrested in pure suspense inside himself, and thoughts wafted through his mind without order.

‘I must go now and see Mama,’ said Winifred, ‘and see Dadda before he goes to sleep.’

She bade them both good–night.

Gudrun also rose to take her leave.

‘You needn’t go yet, need you?’ said Gerald, glancing quickly at the clock.’ It is early yet. I’ll walk down with you when you go. Sit down, don’t hurry away.’

Gudrun sat down, as if, absent as he was, his will had power over her. She felt almost mesmerised. He was strange to her, something unknown. What was he thinking, what was he feeling, as he stood there so rapt, saying nothing? He kept her—she could feel that. He would not let her go. She watched him in humble submissiveness.

‘Had the doctor anything new to tell you?’ she asked, softly, at length, with that gentle, timid sympathy which touched a keen fibre in his heart. He lifted his eyebrows with a negligent, indifferent expression.

‘No—nothing new,’ he replied, as if the question were quite casual, trivial. ‘He says the pulse is very weak indeed, very intermittent—but that doesn’t necessarily mean much, you know.’

He looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and soft and unfolded, with a stricken look that roused him.

‘No,’ she murmured at length. ‘I don’t understand anything about these things.’

‘Just as well not,’ he said. ‘I say, won’t you have a cigarette?—do!’ He quickly fetched the box, and held her a light. Then he stood before her on the hearth again.