A month after the first performance of _Elvira_ Kendal returned to town on a frosty December afternoon from the Surrey lodgings on which he had now established a permanent hold.

He mounted to his room, found his letters lying ready for him, and on the top of them a telegram, which, as his man-servant informed him, had arrived about an hour before.

He took it up carelessly, opened it, and bent over it with a start of anxiety.
It was from his brother-in-law.

'_Marie is very ill.

Doctors much alarmed.