"Hardinge."
The girl turns a white face to his.
"Will you then compel me to marry him?" says she. "Am I"—faintly—"nothing to you? Nothing——" She seems to fade back from him in the growing uncertainty of the light into the shadow of the corner beyond. Curzon makes a step towards her.
At this moment the door is thrown suddenly open, and a man—evidently a professional man—advances into the room.
"Sir Thaddeus," begins he, in a slow, measured way.
The professor stops dead short. Even Perpetua looks amazed.
"I regret to be the messenger of bad news, sir," says the solemn man in black. "They told me I should find you here. I have to tell you, Sir Thaddeus, that your brother, the late lamented Sir Hastings is dead." The solemn man spread his hands abroad.
CHAPTER XVI.
'Till the secret be secret no more
In the light of one hour as it flies,
Be the hour as of suns that expire
Or suns that rise."