Trent smiled grimly.
“You'll get used to it,” he commented. “Mine have been tied for three-and-twenty years—though even yet I don't wear my bonds with grace, precisely.”
He had become once more the hermit of old acquaintance—sardonic, harsh, his emotions hidden beneath that curt indifference of manner with which those who knew him were painfully familiar.
The two men shook hands in silence, and a few minutes later, Herrick, left alone, replaced the letters in the drawer whence he had taken them, and, turning the key upon them, slipped it into his pocket.
CHAPTER XXX
DEFEAT
In remote country districts that memorable Fourth of August, when England declared war on Germany, came and went unostentatiously.
People read the news a trifle breathlessly, reflected with a sigh of contentment on the invincible British Navy, and with a little gust of prideful triumph upon the Expeditionary force—ready to the last burnished button of each man's tunic—and proceeded quietly with their usual avocations.
Then came the soaring Bank Rate, and business men on holiday raced back to London to contend with the new financial conditions and assure their credit. That was all that happened—at first.