journey. At
the end of it a telegram had been handed to him on the stairs of his
hotel:

"Have seen the lady, also Mrs. Hurd. You are urgently asked to undertake
defence."

He spread it out before him now, and pondered it. The bit of flimsy
paper contained for him the promise of all he most coveted,--influence,
emotion, excitement. "She will have returns upon herself," he thought
smiling, "when I see her again. She will be dignified, resentful; she
will suspect everything I say or do--still more, she will suspect
herself. No matter! The situation is in my hands. Whether I succeed or
fail, she will be forced to work with me, to consult with me--she will
owe me gratitude. What made her consent?--she must have felt it in some
sort a humiliation. Is it that Raeburn has been driving her to strong
measures--that she wants, woman-like, to win, and thought me after all
her best chance, and put her pride in her pocket? Or is it?--ah! one
should put _that_ out of one's head. It's like wine--it unsteadies one.
And for a thing like this one must go into training. Shall I write to
her--there is just time now, before I start--take the lofty tone, the
equal masculine tone, which I have noticed she likes?--ask her pardon
for an act of madness--before we go together to the rescue of a life? It
might do--it might go down. But no, I think not! Let the situation
develop itself. Action and reaction--the unexpected--I commit myself to
that. _She_--marry Aldous Raeburn in a month? Well, she may--certainly
she may. But there is no need for me, I think, to take it greatly into
account. Curious! twenty-four hours ago I thought it all done with--dead
and done with. 'So like Provvy,' as Bentham used to say, when he heard
of anything particularly unseemly in the way of natural catastrophe. Now
to dine, and be off! How little sleep can I do with in the next
fortnight?"

He rang, ordered his cab, and then went to the coffee-room for some
hasty food. As he was passing one of the small tables with which the
room was filled, a man who was dining there with a friend recognised him
and gave him a cold nod. Wharton walked on to the further end of the
room, and, while waiting for his meal, buried himself in the local
evening paper, which already contained a report of his speech.

"Did you see that man?" asked the stranger of his friend.

"The small young fellow with the curly hair?"

"Small young fellow, indeed! He is the wiriest athlete I
know--ex