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Updated: May 23, 2025
The complications would be slightly slightly " He paused. Chilcote's latent irritability broke out suddenly. "Look here," he said, "this isn't a chaffing matter, It may be moonshine to you, but it's reality to me." Again Loder took his face between his hands. "Don't ridicule the idea. I'm in dead earnest." Loder said nothing. "Think think it over before you refuse."
He came back to the couch and took her hand; then he touched her cheek for an instant with his fingers. "Good-bye," he said. "Take care of yourself and the kitten," he added, with forced gayety, as he crossed the room. That afternoon Chilcote's nervous condition reached its height.
"You'll dine with me one night and we can talk it out then. I see so little of you nowadays," she added, in a lower voice. "My dear girl, you're unfair!" Chilcote's spirits had risen; he spoke rapidly, almost pleasantly. "It isn't I who keep away it's the stupid affairs of the world that keep me. I'd be with you every hour of the twelve if I had my way." She looked up at the bare trees.
And I've made it plain about about the remuneration? A hundred a week besides all expenses." Loder smiled again. "My pay? Oh yes, you've made it clear as day. Shall we say good-night now?" "Yes. Good-night." There was a strange, distant note in Chilcote's voice, but the other did not pretend to hear it. He pressed the hand he was holding, though the cold dampness of it repelled him.
She saw him pass through the gateway, saw him hail a hansom, then she remembered the waiting chauffeur. On the same day that Chilcote had parted with Lillian but at three o'clock in the afternoon Loder, dressed in Chilcote's clothes and with Chilcote's heavy overcoat slung over his arm, walked from Fleet Street to Grosvenor Square. He walked steadily, neither slowly nor yet fast.
"My dear fellow," he said, with a touch of hauteur, "a man can generally be trusted to look after his own life." Extricating his hand almost immediately, he turned towards the door and without a word of farewell passed into the little hall, leaving Loder alone in the sitting-room. On the night of Chilcote's return to his own, Loder tasted the lees of life poignantly for the first time.
To him the big room with its severe magnificence suggested nothing of the gloom and solitude that it held in its owner's eyes. The ponderous furniture, the high ceiling, the heavy curtains, unchanged since the days of Chilcote's grandfather, all hinted at a far-reaching ownership that stirred him. The ownership was mythical in his regard, and the possessions a mirage, but they filled the day.
As plainly as though he saw the action, he mentally figured Chilcote's furtive glance, the furtive movement of his fingers to his waistcoat-pocket, the hasty dropping of the tabloids into the glass. For an instant the sense of his tacit connivance came to him sharply; the next, he flung it from him. The human, inner voice was whispering its old watchword.
Some one hailed him as be passed through the crowd, but with Chilcote's most absorbed manner he hurried on. Through the door of the supper-room he caught sight of Blessington and Eve, and then for the first time his expression changed, and he turned directly towards them. "Eve," he said, "will you excuse me? I have a word to say to Blessington."
The thrill of exultation with which the misgivings born of Chilcote's vice had dropped away from her mental image of Loder was still too absorbing to be easily dominated. She loved, and as if by a miracle her love had been justified! For the moment the justification was all-sufficing.
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