Chapter Twenty Six.
The News Spreads.
“If I have sinned,” muttered Armstrong, as he leaned back in his chair, for when from time to time he tried to walk about, a painful sensation of giddiness seized upon him, “I am having a foretaste of my punishment. How long he is—how long he is!”
But still Leronde did not come, and to occupy his mind, the sufferer sat and thought out a plan for their journey, which he concluded would mean a cab to Liverpool Street, then the express to Harwich, the boat to Ostend; next, where the seconds willed: and afterwards—
“What?” said the wretched man, with a strange smile. “Ah, who knows! If it could only be oblivion—rest from all this misery and despair!”
He rose to try and write a letter or two, notably one to Cornel, but the effort was painful, and he crept back to his chair.
“She will know—she will divine—that I preferred to die,” he muttered, “Ah, at last! Why, he has been hours.”
For there was a step outside, and then the door was thrown open, as he lay back, with his aching eyes shaded by his hand.
“Come at last, then!” he sighed; and the next moment he started, for the studio door was banged to, and locked. “You, Joe?”
“Yes, I’ve come at last,” cried Pacey, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and striding up, to stand before him with his legs far apart.