Heavens! Was that all? Willing victims and accomplices were to be found. What else?
"And you must take no steps while my father lives."
She passed in a second from death unto life. The Earl was clinging to existence by a thread. Hal hadn't even bargained for the return of the jewels he had given her. She felt that she must make some show of resistance or the terms would be changed. It was too ridiculously simple.
"Of course Lord Yester's wishes must not be ignored."
"I cannot allow you or Lord Yester to decide that for me."
He turned away as he spoke and so was not aware that Lord Yester had entered the room in time to hear this reference to himself. It is universally conceded that it requires courage to interfere between husband and wife; but then Lord Yester was a brave little man. He could wait no longer. His fate, too, was being decided in the library. He felt he must have a voice in deciding it. More than that, she needed him, this soft, plaintive soul that had come through time and space, through sin and suffering, to meet him, her complement, her supplement. Small, slender, with a delicate, sensitive face, distinguished by regular but small features, he had a fine, fresh, unspoiled capacity for suffering, which she teased and worried and played with for her infinite amusement. Quite apart from his coming coronet, she was in love with him; that is, she was a pyromaniac, and she got sensations from seeing his emotions burn, the fresh, beautiful emotions of a poet and a child.
"Harold, I don't think you have met Lord Norman Yester?"
She was the only one of the three who was without embarrassment.
"Yes, I think I met Lord Yester when he was at Eton."
Hal had no intention of making the other uncomfortable.