United States or Russia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the excitement of to-night and the reaction." The next morning at eight o'clock, and again without breakfast, Loder covered the distance between Grosvenor Square and Clifford's Inn. He left Chilcote's house hastily with a haste that only an urgent motive could have driven him to adopt.
But if this was so, it escaped the notice of the one person concerned; for it was long after tea had been served, long after Eve had offered to do penance for her monopoly of him by driving him to Chilcote's club, that Loder realized with any degree of distinctness that it was she and not he who had taken the lead in their interview; that it was she and not he who had bridged the difficult silences and given a fresh direction to dangerous channels of talk.
There was a moment of apparent doubt, then a stir of skirts, a quick, uncertain knock, and the intruder entered. For a couple of seconds she stood in the doorway; then, as Loder made no effort to speak, she moved into the room. She had apparently but just returned from some entertainment, for, though she had drawn off her long gloves, she was still wearing an evening cloak of lace and fur.
Then for the first time Loder knew what his presence in the room really meant; and at best the knowledge was disconcerting. It is not every day that a man is called upon to unearth himself. "Suggest?" he repeated, blankly. "Yes. I'd rather have your idea of the affair than anybody else's. You are so dear and sarcastic and keen that you can't help getting straight at the middle of a fact."
"Were any English ladies ever found to have lived in the place murdered, you know bodies found and all that?" young Marsham asked diffidently, yearning for an obvious completeness. "Not that we could ever learn," Loder replied. "We made inquiries too.... So you all give it up? Well, so do I...." And he rose.
The tone unnerved Chilcote; he suddenly dropped into a chair. "It it wasn't my fault," he began. "I I have had a horrible time!" Loder's lips tightened. "Yes," he said, "yes I understand." The other glanced up with a gleam of his old suspicion "'Twas all my nerves, Loder " "Of course. Yes, of course." Loder's interruption was curt. Chilcote eyed him doubtfully.
Loder, as our young man was aware, meant the new "Renaissance," but though he reached home in the evening it was not to this convenient modern theatre that Wayworth first proceeded. He spent a late hour with Mrs. Alsager, an hour that throbbed with calculation. She told him that Mr.
"You haven't quite grasped me yet, I can see. I'm a man of moods, you know. Up to the present you've seen my slack side, my jarred side, but I have quite another when I care to show it. I'm a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde affair." Again he laughed, and Greening echoed the sound diffidently. Chilcote had evidently discouraged familiarity. Loder eyed him with abrupt understanding.
She did not come out of her room after her return from her walk. Becky thought it was Major Loder and the Captain who frightened her. "She mustn't stop here," Becky reasoned with herself. "She must go away, the silly little fool. She shan't marry either of these men. It's too bad of Loder. No; she shall marry the bamboo cane, I'll settle it this very night."
Minutely watchful of Russia's attitude, Fraide quietly organized his forces and strengthened his position with a statesmanlike grasp of opportunity; and to Loder the attributes displayed by his leader during those trying days formed an endless and absorbing study.
Word Of The Day