s warning assumed a certain
importance to his mind. He went down to his desk, in the back office,
and took his wife's letter out of the drawer, and read it through
slowly. "Ha!" he said, pausing as he came across the sentence which
requested him to write beforehand, in the unlikely event of his deciding
to go to Ramsgate. He thought again of the strangely persistent way in
which his wife had dwelt on his trusting her; he recalled her nervous
anxious looks, her deepening colour, her agitation at one moment, and
then her sudden silence and sudden retreat to the cab. Fed by these
irritating influences, the inbred suspicion in his nature began to take
fire slowly. She might be innocent enough in asking him to give her
notice before he joined her at the seaside--she might naturally be
anxious to omit no needful preparation for his comfort. Still, he didn't
like it; no, he didn't like it. An appearance as of a slow collapse
passed little by little over his rugged wrinkled face. He looked many
years older than his age, as he sat at the desk, with the flaring
candlelight close in front of him, thinking. The anonymous letter lay
before him, side by side with his wife's letter. On a sudden, he lifted
his gray head, and clenched his fist, and struck the venomous written
warning as if it had been a living thing that could feel. "Whoever you
are," he said, "I'll take your advice."

He never even made the attempt to go to bed that night. His pipe helped
him through the comfortless and dreary hours. Once or twice he thought
of his daughter. Why had her mother been so anxious about her? Why had
her mother taken her to Ramsgate? Perhaps, as a blind--ah, yes, perhaps
as a blind! More for the sake of something to do than for any other
reason, he packed a handbag with a few necessaries. As soon as the
servant was stirring, he ordered her to make him a cup of strong coffee.
After that, it was time to show himself as usual, on the opening of the
shop. To his astonishment, he found his clerk taking down the shutters,
in place of the porter.

"What does this mean?" he asked. "Where is Farnaby?"

The clerk looked at his master, and paused aghast with a shutter in his
hands.

"Good Lord! what has come to you?" he cried. "Are you ill?"

Old Ronald angrily repeated his question: "Where is Farnaby?"

"I don't know," was the answer.

"You don't know? Have you been up to his bedroom?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

"Well, he isn't in his bedroom. And