as he, too, waiting
for the tidal train?

After straying as far as Hendon during his lonely walk of the previous
night, he had taken refuge at the village inn, and had fallen asleep
(from sheer exhaustion) toward those later hours of the morning which
were the hours that his wife's foresight had turned to account. When
he returned to the lodging, the landlady could only inform him that
her tenant had settled everything with her, and had left (for what
destination neither she nor her servant could tell) more than two hours
since.

Having given some little time to inquiries, the result of which
convinced him that the clew was lost so far, Midwinter had quitted
the house, and had pursued his way mechanically to the busier and more
central parts of the metropolis. With the light now thrown on his wife's
character, to call at the address she had given him as the address at
which her mother lived would be plainly useless. He went on through the
streets, resolute to discover her, and trying vainly to see the means
to his end, till the sense of fatigue forced itself on him once more.
Stopping to rest and recruit his strength at the first hotel he came
to, a chance dispute between the waiter and a stranger about a lost
portmanteau reminded him of his own luggage, left at the terminus, and
instantly took his mind back to the circumstances under which he and
Mr. Bashwood had met. In a moment more, the idea that he had been vainly
seeking on his way through the streets flashed on him. In a moment more,
he had determined to try the chance of finding the steward again on
the watch for the person whose arrival he had evidently expected by the
previous evening's train.

Ignorant of the report of Allan's death at sea; uninformed, at the
terrible interview with his wife, of the purpose which her assumption of
a widow's dress really had in view, Midwinter's first vague suspicions
of her fidelity had now inevitably developed into the conviction
that she was false. He could place but one interpretation on her open
disavowal of him, and on her taking the name under which he had secretly
married her. Her conduct forced the conclusion on him that she was
engaged in some infamous intrigue; and that she had basely secured
herself beforehand in the position of all others in which she knew it
would be most odious and most repellent to him to claim his authority
over her. With that conviction he was now watching Mr. Bashwood, firmly
persuaded t