I hear the unlucky devil's just cleaned himself out at
Monte Carlo."
The twenty-seventh? It was the day when Miss Harden was to join her
father at Cannes. The coincidence of dates was significant; it
amounted to proof. It meant that Sir Frederick must have long
anticipated the catastrophe, and that he had the decency to spare her
the last painful details. She would not have to witness the invasion
of the Vandals, the overturning of the household gods, and the
defilement of their sacred places.
Well, he thought bitterly, they couldn't be much more defiled than
they were already. He saw himself as an abominable object, a thing
with a double face and an unclean and aitchless tongue, sitting there
from morning to night, spying, calculating, appraising, with a view to
fraud. At least that was how she would think of him when she knew; and
he had got to tell her.
He was on the rack again; and the wonder was how he had ever left it.
It seemed to him that he could never have been long released at any
time. He had had moments of comparative ease, when he could lie on it
at one end of the room and see Lucia sitting at the other, and the
sight of her must have soothed his agony. He had had moments of
forgetfulness, of illusion, when he had gone to sleep on the rack, and
had dreamed the most delicious dreams, moments even of deliverance,
when his conscience, exhausted with the sheer effort of winding, had
dropped to sleep too.
Pages:
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257