The room was luxuriously furnished, as was
the entire suite, but it was all strange and uncomfortable
to his senses. The operation of shaving and dressing
in solitude produced an oppression of loneliness.
He regretted not having brought his man with him for
this reason, and then, upon meditation, for other reasons.
A person of his position ought always to have a servant
with him. The hotel people must have been surprised at
his travelling unattended--and the people at High Thorpe
must also have thought it strange. It flashed across
his mind that no doubt his wife had most of all thought
it strange. How would she explain to herself his sudden,
precipitate journey to London alone? Might she not quite
naturally put an unpleasant construction upon it? It
was bad enough to have to remember that they had parted
in something like a tiff; he found it much worse to be
fancying the suspicions with which she would be turning
over his mysterious absence in her mind.
He went downstairs as speedily as possible and, discovering no
overt signs of breakfast in the vicinity of the restaurant,
passed out and made his way to the Embankment.
This had been a favourite walk of his in the old days--but
he considered it now with an unsympathetic eye.
It seemed a dry and haggard and desolate-looking place
by comparison with his former impressions of it.
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