My
business may keep me employed for about a week, so I shall not
have the privilege of being present at your ladyship's
water-party on Wednesday. I remain your ladyship's most
humble and most obedient servant,
PERCY BLAKENEY."
Marguerite must suddenly have been imbued with her husband's
slowness of intellect, for she had perforce to read the few simple
lines over and over again, before she could fully grasp their meaning.
She stood on the landing, turning over and over in her hand
this curt and mysterious epistle, her mind a blank, her nerves
strained with agitation and a presentiment she could not very well
have explained.
Sir Percy owned considerable property in the North, certainly,
and he had often before gone there alone and stayed away a week at a
time; but it seemed so very strange that circumstances should have
arisen between five and six o'clock in the morning that compelled him
to start in this extreme hurry.
Vainly she tried to shake off an unaccustomed feeling of
nervousness: she was trembling from head to foot. A wild,
unconquerable desire seized her to see her husband again, at once, if
only he had not already started.
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