Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/284

 he had been left alone with men and women of a coarser type—brutes in human guise, who starved and beat him and swore at him because he would neither lie nor steal. This part of his story his friends had striven to make him forget, but when his brain was clouded by fever, the frightful images of those terrible weeks in a New York slum came back to him with redoubled force, and it sometimes seemed as though only the presence of the mother for whom he cried so constantly could chase them away.

And yet Fenella did not come.

On the third day Jacynth waxed desperate, and resolved to telegraph again. He had seen in the newspapers some accounts of a gale which had been raging in the Channel, and it occurred to him that the Guernsey boats might perhaps have ceased running, which would of course give a reason for Fenella's silence, and yet it seemed to him impossible that she should have heard nothing yet, or been unable to send him any answer. He would telegraph again, but he would go to Onslow first; it was possible—just possible—that she might have written to him.

From the look of agitation on Frank's face, and the convulsive tightness with which he grasped a letter in his hand, Jacynth fancied at first that his conjecture had been correct. "What is it?" he said hurriedly. "Your wife—is she coming? Does she know that you are safe?"