"You are coming down here, you say. There's a good train from Victoria at 1.45. Can you catch it?"
"Ye—s. I think so."
"Then I'll send a car to meet you at this end."
He rang the bell, altered the time of lunch, and then sat down to think. But not for long. Calmly as he had talked to the lawyer, his every nerve was quivering with excitement, every faculty was in tension.
He went to the window and looked out.
All he saw was his no longer. He had no doubt about it, and it seemed to him that an icy hand was placed upon his heart as he realised it.
And he might have retained it!
Was he glad or sorry because of what he had done? Every particle of his being was crying out for the life he longed to live, and yet——As he thought of the price he would have to pay, as he remembered Romanoff's words, he did not repent.
He calmly waited for the lawyer's arrival.
By four o'clock Mr. Bidlake was on his way back to London again, and Dick knew that his own fate was sealed. The lawyer had proved to him that he had no right to be there, and while he advised him to put on a bold face, and in the last extremity to try and compromise with Anthony Riggleton, he held out no hope. Anthony Riggleton was beyond doubt the true heir of old Charles Faversham, and he had undisputable proofs of the fact.