The next morning, when she saw Lorraine again, she understood that they had saved her life, but probably only for a few days at the most.
Lorraine was almost too weak to speak, but she looked into Hal’s eyes, and in her own there was a dumb imploring. Hal leant down and murmured:
“What is it, Lorry?… Do you want Alymer?”
“Yes,” was the faint whisper. “I feel it is the end. I want so much to see him once more.”
“I will go to London myself, and fetch him,” Hal said, and a look of rest crept into the dying woman’s eyes.
So it happened that the day before the great libel case Hal stood in Hermon’s chambers, and delivered her message.
It was a tense moment—a moment of warring instincts, warring inclinations, conflicting fates. It was surely the very irony of ironies, that within sight of his goal, with all this woman had manoeuvred to give him almost in his hands, she should be the one to step suddenly between him and the realisation of everything his life had striven for.
To fail Sir Philip Hall at the eleventh hour, under such circumstance, could only mean an irreparable disaster. He would lose, as far as his profession was concerned, in every single way. It would strike a blow at his progress, from which it might never wholly recover.
No wonder, confronted with the sudden demand life had flung at him, he stood stock still, with rigid face, almost overcome by the swift sword-thrust of fate, and made no reply.