Woolper that I wish to see her on very important business."
The parlour-maid departed, and Valentine was left to endure the weariness
of waiting until Mrs. Woolper should have "cleaned herself."
Mr. Sheldon's study at Bayswater did not offer much more to the eye of
the investigator than Mr. Sheldon's office in the City. There were the
handsomely bound books behind the inviolable plate-glass doors, and there
was the neat writing-table with the machine for weighing letters, and the
large business-like looking blotting-pad, and the ponderous brass-rimmed
inkstand, with no nonsense about it; and yonder, on a clumsy little oak
table with thick legs, appeared the copying machine, with a big black
iron lever, and a massive screw with which to screw all the spontaneous
feeling out of every letter that came beneath its crushing influence.
Up and down this joyless den Valentine Hawkehurst paced, with the demon
of impatience raging in his breast. The July sunshine blazed hot upon the
window, and the voices of croquet-players in adjacent gardens rose shrill
upon the summer air. And there were girls playing croquet while she, his
"rose of the garden, garden of girls," lay sick unto death! O, why could
he not offer a hecatomb of these common creatures as a substitute for
that one fair spirit?
He looked into the garden--the prim modern garden, but a few years
reclaimed from that abomination of desolation, the "eligible lot of
building land.
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