"It dictates nothing that you can have a claim to hear. There is the door."
Seth had his reasons now for not wishing to prolong the interview.
"I will not trouble you any longer, sir. I know what kind of justice I might expect from you in such a matter as this. From this moment it is for me to act, not to talk. I have but this to say before I leave. If my child comes to grief through your son--if he inflicts a wrong upon her--I will devote my life to exposing both him and you."
He quitted the room upon this, and, giving instructions to the cab-driver, bade Sally jump in.
"Where are you going now, Daddy?" asked Sally.
"To Sevenoaks. We may yet be in time."
The same train which conveyed him and Sally to Sevenoaks, conveyed Mr. Temple also. The men did not see each other. Mr. Temple rode first-class, Seth and Sally third.
The snowstorm showed no sign of abatement; steadily and heavily the white flakes fell.
The links which fate weaves around human lives were drawing closer and closer around the lives of the actors in this story; every yard that was traversed by the train, conveying Seth and Mr. Temple, strengthened the threads which for years had been so far distant from one another, that nothing but the strangest circumstance could have prevented them from eventually breaking. As Seth gazed from the window upon the falling snow, he prayed that he might be in time to save the child of his love, or to assure himself that she was on the right track. To Mr. Temple the heavy snowfall brought the memory of a night long buried in the past, when he had stood hidden near a quaint old church, while strangers' hands were saving from death the woman he had betrayed. And an uneasy feeling crept into his mind at the thought that the church was within a mile of the place towards which he was wending his way.