“A carriage in Thirteenth Street? My good fellow, my own brougham is at the door.”
“I know, I know—but they’re there too, sir; or they will be, inside of a minute. For God’s sake, Mr. Vard, don’t trifle!—There’s a way out by Thirteenth Street, I tell you”—
“Bardwell’s myrmidons, eh?” said Vard. “Help me on with my overcoat, Cornley, will you?”
Cornley’s teeth chattered.
“Mr. Vard, your best friends ... Miss Vard, won’t you speak to your father?” He turned to me haggardly;—“We can get out by the back way?”
I nodded.
Vard stood towering—in some infernal way he seemed literally to rise to the situation—one hand in the bosom of his coat, in the attitude of patriotism in bronze. I glanced at his daughter: she hung on him with a drowning look. Suddenly she straightened herself; there was something of Vard in the way she faced her fears—a kind of primitive calm we drawing-room folk don’t have. She stepped to him and laid her hand on his arm. The pause hadn’t lasted ten seconds.
“Father—” she said.
Vard threw back his head and swept the studio with a sovereign eye.
“The back way, Mr. Vard, the back way,” Cornley whimpered. “For God’s sake, sir, don’t lose a minute.”