It might have been a moment, for all that he knew, or it might have been an hour, when at last something came to relieve the unbearable tension of Mr. Tapster's feelings. He had been standing aside helpless, aware of and yet not watching the efforts made to restore Flossy to consciousness.
The doctor raised himself and straightened his cramped shoulders and tired arms. With a look of great concern on his face he approached the bereaved husband.
"I'm afraid it's no good," he said; "the shock of the plunge in the cold water probably killed her. She was evidently in poor health, and--and ill-nourished. But, of course, we shall go on for some time longer, and----"
But whatever he had meant to say remained unspoken, for a telegraph boy, with the impudence natural to his kind, was forcing his way into and through the crowded room.
"James Tapster, Esquire?" he cried in a high, childish treble.
The master of the house held out his hand mechanically. He took the buff envelope and stared down at it, sufficiently master of himself to perceive that some fool had apparently imagined Cumberland Crescent to be in South London; before his eyes swam the line, "Delayed in transmission." Then, opening the envelope, he saw the message for which he had now been waiting so eagerly for some days, but it was with indifference that he read the words:
End of Project Gutenberg's Studies in Wives, by Marie Belloc Lowndes