“No, sir. It’s in the corner of your study between the window and the bookcase.”
“No, it is not there, but I am certain it was this afternoon.”
“I’m sure it was there to-night, sir, just before Mr Reed went away.”
“Very well, good-night,” said the Major; and he went back into the little study, and looked carefully round again.
“Why, of course!” he exclaimed, “I must have stood it in my room.”
Chapter Twenty Three.
The Tare Sowing.
A man was going through the street with his pole extinguishing the gas lamps, as the hansom cab bearing Clive Reed went along at a sharp trot toward Russell Square. The waning light looked ghastly and strange, and well in keeping with his anxious state of mind, for in spite of all his genuine love for Dinah, it was impossible not to feel a thrill of misery akin to despair when reminded of one with whom so much of his boyhood and the later past had been mingled.