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Updated: May 20, 2025
Adrian Fellowes, the amiable, ever-present secretary and "chamberlain" of Rudyard's household, as Jasmine teasingly called him, whose handsome, unintellectual face had lighted with amusement at the conversation, now interposed. "Couldn't you give us some idea how it can be done, this smooth passage of the Styx?" he asked. "We'll promise not to use it."
In the interval which followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both, with exasperating insistence: "Not like the roses shall our love be, dear " Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held Rudyard's eyes.
She could not bear to remain in Rudyard's house; and in his heart of hearts Rudyard would wish the same, even if he believed her innocent; but if she must stay for appearance' sake, then it would be good to have Lady Tynemouth with her. Rudyard would be grateful for time to get his balance again.
Barry would have given much for a flask of brandy. A tablespoonful would bring Rudyard back. A surgeon was not needed, however. Krool's hands had knowledge. Barry remembered the day when Wallstein was taken ill in Rudyard's house, and how Krool acted with the skill of a Westminster sawbones. Suddenly a bugle-call sounded, loud and clear and very near them.
There had been times in the past few months when such thoughts as these vaguely possessed Rudyard's mind; but he could never, would never, feel that all was over, that the book of Jasmine's life was closed to him; not even when his whole nature was up in arms against the injury she had done him.
At eleven o'clock to the minute Ian Stafford entered Byng's mansion and was being taken to Jasmine's sitting-room, when Rudyard appeared on the staircase, and with a peremptory gesture waved the servant away. Ian was suddenly conscious of a terrible change in Rudyard's appearance.
Barry, himself bleeding from slight wounds, stooped over his unconscious friend with a great anxiety. "No, it is nothing," Krool said, with his hand on Rudyard's breast. "The left arm, it is hurt, the head not get all the blow. Alamachtig, it is good! The Baas it is right with the Baas." Barry Whalen sighed with relief.
He hesitated, then his voice broke and his body suddenly shook violently, as tears rose in the far, deep wells of feeling and tried to reach the fevered eyes. He leaned his head in his big, awkward hands. Stafford saw the way of escape for Jasmine slowly open out, and went on quickly. "You have neglected her " Rudyard's head came up in angry protest "not wilfully; but you have neglected her.
"The letter Fellowes' letter to you." "I dropped it last night," she said, in a voice grown strangely impersonal and colourless. "I dropped it in Rudyard's room, I suppose." She seemed not to have any idea of excluding the terrible facts, but to be speaking as it were to herself and of something not vital, though her whole person was transformed into an agony which congealed the lifeblood.
Coming up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her husband's room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted sharply something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard's voice sounded as it did now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which came from some desolate place, distant, arid and alien.
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