Here the cab turned into the Euston Road, and the palatial front of the Midland Hotel revealed itself in a burst of splendour to Mary’s astonished eyes.
“My!” she exclaimed, “it must be Buckingham Palace, surely!”
Her astonishment became stupefaction when the cab drove under the Italian-Gothic portico, and a liveried page sprang forward to open the door, and relieve the bewildered Abigail of her mistress’s travelling bag. Her surprise and admiration went on increasing, like a geometrical progression, commencing above unity, as she followed her mistress across the pillared hall and up the marble staircase, to a corridor, whose remote perspective ended far away in a twinkling speck of gaslight.
“Gracious, what a place,” she cried. “If all the hotels in London are like this what must the Queen’s palace be?”
The polite German attendant opened the door of a sitting-room, where a bright fire burned as if to welcome expected guests. He had softly murmured the words “sitting-room” into Laura’s ear as she crossed the hall, and she had bowed gently in assent. No more was needed. He felt that she was the right sort of customer for the Grand Midland.
“Die pettroom is vithin,” he said, indicating a door of communication. “Dere is also tressing room. Dere vill pe a room vanted for die mait, matam, I subbose. I vill sent die champermait. Matam vill vish to tine?”
“No, thanks. You can bring some tea,” answered Laura, sinking wearily into a chair. She kept her veil down to hide her tear-stained cheeks. “If a gentleman called Sampson should inquire for me in the course of the evening, please send him here.”
“Yes, matame. Vat name?”
“What man! Oh, you mean my own name. Treverton, Mrs. Treverton.”
She shuddered at the thought that in a few days the name might be notorious.
Mary ordered a dish of cutlets to be sent up with the tea, and presently she and the chambermaid were arranging Mrs. Treverton’s bedroom, opening the portmanteau, setting out the ivory brushes and silver-topped bottles from the travelling bag, and giving a look of comfort and homeliness to the strange apartment.
Fires were lighted in the bedroom and dressing room, and there was that all-pervading air of luxury, which, to the traveller of limited means, suggests the idea that, for the time being, he is living at the rate of ten thousand a year.
The evening was sad and weary for Laura Treverton. Now only was she beginning to realise the catastrophe that had befallen her. Now only, as she walked up and down the strange sitting-room, alone, friendless, in the big world of London, did all the horror of her position come home to her.
Her husband a prisoner, charged with the most direful offence man can commit against his fellow-man, to be brought, perhaps tomorrow, to face his accusers, and to have the details of his supposed guilt bandied from lip to lip tomorrow night, the subject of idle wonder and foolish speculations. He, her darling, degraded to the lowest depth to which humanity can fall! It was too horrible. She clasped her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out an actual scene of horror—the dock, the judgment-seat, the hangman, and the scaffold.
“My husband suspected of such a crime,” she said to herself. “My husband, whose inmost thoughts are known to me; a man incapable of cruelty to the meanest thing that crawls.”
Sometimes, in the course of those slow hours, a sudden excitement took hold of her. She forgot everything except the one fact of her husband’s position.
“Let us go to him, Mary,” she cried. “Get me my hat and jacket, and let us go to him directly.”
“Indeed, ma’am, we can’t get in,” remonstrated Mary. “Don’t you remember what they told us about the hours of admission. You were only to see him at a particular time. Why, they’re all abed by this time, poor things, I make no doubt.”
“How cruel,” cried Laura; “how cruel it is that I can’t be with him.”
“If you go on worrying yourself like this, ma’am, you’ll be ill. You haven’t eaten a bit since you left home, though I’m sure the cutlets was done lovely. Shall I order some arrowroot for your supper? Or a basin of soup, now? What would be more nourishing.”
“No, Mary, it’s no use. I can’t eat anything. How I wish Mr. Sampson would come.”
“It’s almost too late to expect him, ma’am. I don’t suppose he’s left Hazlehurst. Perhaps he couldn’t get away today.”
“Not get away!” echoed Laura. “Nonsense. He would never abandon my husband in the hour of difficulty.”
The German waiter at this very moment announced, “Mr. Zambzon.”
“I’m awfully late, Mrs. Treverton,” said the little man, bustling in, “but I thought you’d like to see me, so I came in. I’ve engaged a room in the hotel, and I shall stay as long as I’m wanted, even if my Hazlehurst business goes to pot.”
“How good you are. You have only just come to London?”
“Only just come indeed! I came by the train after yours. I was in London at seven o’clock. I’ve been with Mr. Leopold, the well-known solicitor—the man who’s so great in criminal cases, you know—and I’ve got him for our side. And I’ve been down to Cibber Street with him, and we’ve picked up all the information we can. The landlady’s laid up with low fever, and so we couldn’t get much out of her, but we’ve seen Mr. Gerard, and we know pretty well what he has to bring forward against us, and I think he’ll be rather a reluctant witness. It’s a pity that Mr. Desrolles is out of the way. We might have made something out of him.”
Laura turned to him with a startled look. Desrolles! That was the name by which her husband had known her father.
