She felt a sense go through her as of a sword turned within her.
"But Rollo!" she said.
His hands crushed hers so that she had pain. "Yes, Rollo!" he said. "I nearly went to him to-night. I shall go yet. Rollo! Rollo! Rollo!"
He ground the name between his teeth. The pressure of his hands on hers became almost insufferable. She felt it as nothing to what shook her brain. She was back at the bedside in the Holloway Road. She was spun through the years of her waiting, waiting. She was fronted with the torments when that for which she waited had seemed to be snatched from her. There filled the room and stooped towards her the figure that she envisaged as fate, that had stayed her hand, that she obeyed, that had tried her, that had fought for her, that now was come to prove itself fate indeed.
In one part she was dizzy and overcome with the shaking at her brain; in the other she was listening to Percival and worse beset at every word. "I have seen her," he said, "I have seen her to-night. They are forcing her to this. They have arranged it for years—arranged it! Bought her and sold her because he is what he is. Aunt Maggie, she loved me for myself. He comes in! he comes in! he comes in! and takes her because he is Lord Burdon."
The shaking at her brain pitched suddenly to a tensest balance like a machine that rattles up to action then tunes to a level spinning.
"He is not Lord Burdon!" she said.
He was silent but he did not heed her.
"He is not Lord Burdon!"
At her repetition he moved quickly in his seat and relaxed his hands. "Oh, why say that? Why say that?"