the hotel, and looked out for his private dwelling—128, Hyde Park Gardens.
She rang for a waiter.
“Can I send a messenger to Hyde Park Gardens?” she said, hurrying on to her business, tired and worn out as she was. “It is only to ask if Judge Corbet is at home this evening. If he is, I must go and see him.”
The waiter was a little surprised, and would gladly have had her name to authorize the enquiry; but she could not bear to send it; it would be bad enough that first meeting, without the feeling that he, too, had had time to recall all the past days. Better to go in upon him unprepared, and plunge into the subject.
The waiter returned with the answer while she yet was pacing up and down the room restlessly, nerving herself for the interview.
“The messenger has been to Hyde Park Gardens, ma’am. The Judge and Lady Corbet are gone out to dinner.”
Lady Corbet! Of course Ellinor knew that he was married. Had she not been present at the wedding in East Chester Cathedral; but, somehow, these recent events had so carried her back to old times, that the intimate association of the names, “the Judge and Lady Corbet,” seemed to awaken her out of some dream.
