uck, and there was no
appearance of Ted), she found him lying in a deep sleep; one arm was
flung outside the counterpane, the hand had closed on a crumpled sheet
of paper. It was Audrey's last note of invitation--the baby had taken it
to bed with him.

"Poor boy--poor, poor Ted!"

But, for all her sympathy, love, the stupidity that comes on you like a
madness, was a thing incomprehensible to Katherine.

CHAPTER XIV

The next day Audrey's head was aching to some purpose. She had been
going through a course of Langley Wyndham. Yesterday he had brought her
his last book, "London Legends," and she had sat up half the night to
read it. She was to tell him what she thought of it, and her ideas were
in a whirl.

She stayed in bed for breakfast, excused herself from lunch, left word
with the footman that she was not at home that afternoon, and sent down
another message five minutes afterwards that, if by any chance Mr.
Wyndham were to call, he might be admitted. "Not that he's in the least
likely to come after being here yesterday," she said to herself; and
yet, as she sat alone in the drawing room, she listened for the ringing
of bells, the opening of doors, and the sound of footsteps on the
stairs. Every five minutes she looked at the clock, and her heart kept
time to its ticking. Half-past two. In any case he wouldn't come before
three; and yet--surely that was the front-door bell. No. Three o'clock,
four o'clock--he would be more likely to drop in about tea-time. Five
o'clock; tea came in on the stroke of it, and still no Wyndham.
Half-past five--he had once called later than that when he wanted to
find her alone. Something told her that he would come to-day. He would
be anxious to know what she thought of his book. She was in that state
of mind when people trust in intuitions, failing positive evidence.
Surely in some past state of existence she had sat in that chair,
surrounded by the same objects, thinking the same thoughts, and that
train of ideas had been completed by the arrival of Wyndham. Science
accounts for this sensation by supposing that one half of the brain,
more agile than another, jumps to its conclusion before its tardier
fellow can arrive. To Audrey it was a prophecy certain of fulfilment.
And all the time her head kept on aching. The poor little brain went on
wandering in a maze of its own making. How truly she had, in cousin
Bella's phrase, "entangled herself" with Hardy, with Ted, and poss