What was he to do? To follow her, of course, if by any means he could
discover whither she had gone. To set the telegraph wires going, also, with
a view to discovering her destination. He drove off at once to the chief
telegraph office, and wrote a couple of messages, one to Mr. Lovel, at
Spa--the other to Mr. Oliver, at Holborough Rectory; with a brief stern
request to be informed immediately if his wife should arrive at either
place. There was Lady Laura Armstrong, her most intimate friend, with whom
she might possibly seek a refuge in the hour of her trouble; but he did not
care to make any application in that quarter, unless driven to do so. He
did not want to make his wrongs public.
From the telegraph office he drove to the Northern Railway Station, and
made minute inquiries about the trains. There was a train by which she
might have gone to Calais half an hour before he arrived there. He
enlisted the services of an official, and promenaded the waiting-rooms and
platforms, the dreary chambers in which travellers wait for their luggage,
to and fro between the barriers that torment the soul of the impatient. He
asked this man, and several other men, if a lady, with her baby and maid,
had been observed to take their departure by any train within the last
hour. But the men shrugged their shoulders hopelessly. Ladies and maids and
babies came and went in flocks, and no one noticed them.
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