And so the game goes on.
The living grains of sand go slipping and sliding into place in that gigantic hour-glass, striving and fretting in their vanity, but always impotently falling towards that thin neck, where days are numbered and the punctilious turnstile ushers to those mysterious marches where there is no more Time.
Look at them here.
Judge and maiden jostling a prelate—one upon either side—each of them in a toss about the same Anthony Lyveden, yet neither aware of the other's existence, and all four falling, while they fret, first into place and presently, one by one, towards that thin neck where days are numbered….
What? Have I whipped up a puppet without advising you? Bear with me, sirs. 'Tis but the rustle of a gown—a silk knee against satin—upon the staircase. In another moment I shall have opened the door.
The more Monseigneur Forest thought upon the matter, so suddenly thrust smoking before him, the more uneasy he became. The kindest of men, he found the picture of the poor legatee fighting for existence when, but for another's remissness, he would have had a goodly heritage, inexpressibly distressing. Indeed, could he have started for Rome that night he would have done so. But for the knowledge that he was about to do all in his power to rectify the wrong, he could not have slept. As it was, the reflection that Anthony Lyveden had yet to be found worried him greatly. It was, of course, most unfortunate that the business had not cropped up before. Here he was on his way to Hampshire, in response to a cry so instant that he had set everything on one side, and now, however sore her need of him, his niece, Miss Valerie French, would have to wait. Blood might be thicker than water, but the poor pinched ghost that had been knocking so long upon his door took vaulting precedence of any flesh and blood. In the good man's eyes this stranger, Anthony Lyveden, had earned and must be accorded the privileges of the dead.
Directly he reached his hotel he sat down at his bed-room table and indited a letter.
1st March, 1921.
My DEAR VALERIE,
I am, as you see, in London.