So when she summoned the servant to let Harry out, she told him that if Mr.Belcher should call, he was to be informed that she was too ill to see him.
Mr.Belcher did call within three minutes after the door closed on the lad.

He had a triumphant smile on his face, as if he did not doubt that Mrs.Dillingham had been engaged in forwarding his own dirty work.

His face blackened as he received her message, and he went wondering home, with ill-natured curses on his lips that will not bear repeating.
Mrs.Dillingham closed the doors of her drawing-room, took the paper on which Harry had written, and resumed her seat.

For the hour that lay between her and her dinner, she held the paper in her cold, wet hand.
She knew the name she should find there, and she determined that before her eye should verify the prophecy of her heart, she would achieve perfect self-control.
Excited by the interview with the lad, and the prescience of its waiting _denouement_, her mind went back into his and his father's history.

Mr.
Belcher could have alleviated that history; nay, prevented it altogether.