“The shares are going up every day,” said Loring; “you ought to make a good thing of it; and you’ll sell at the end of this week, I take it? However, of course, I don’t want to press you. They’ll go off fast enough.”
Julian lifted his head suddenly, and drove his clenched hand deep down into his pocket.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “All right, Loring, I’ll take them.”
“To-day?” said Loring suavely.
“To-day!” returned Julian, almost fiercely.
He turned and left the room abruptly, without another word. And Loring, with the smile of the night before touching his lips once more, took up his paper again. Apparently he had forgotten the letter he had received from South Africa on the previous day, and the news it contained.
CHAPTER VII
It was six o’clock on the following day, and in the sunset light of the July evening—a light with which the bustling, hurrying, unlovely crowd on which it fell seemed strangely out of harmony—the current of human life was setting strongly in every direction from the City. Along Cornhill, going against the stream, but driven, nevertheless, at a pace which was looked upon far from favourably by the police occupied in regulating the traffic, there came a hansom cab. In the cab, with one hand gripping the doors until the knuckles stood out white, was Julian Romayne. His hat was pulled slightly forward over his brow, as if with some half-conscious sense of the ghastliness of his face, some instinct to hide that ghastliness from casual eyes. His face was of a livid pallor. There were grey shadows about the mouth, which was set into hard lines of temporary and difficult self-control. His nostrils, not sensitive as a rule, quivered slightly as the pace of his horse slackened perforce now and again; he gave no other slightest sign of consciousness of his surroundings.
The cab turned out of Cornhill, and in another second pulled up suddenly. Almost before the cab had stopped, Julian flung open the doors and leapt out. He paid the man double his fare, dashed into the building before which they had stopped, and up the stairs to an office on the second floor. His hand was shaking like a leaf as he stretched it out to try the lock of the door. It yielded to his touch, and he flung it roughly open and passed rapidly in. The outer office had only one occupant, a rather feeble-looking little man, who was trying to improve the appearance of a shabby hat by a careful application of his coat-sleeve. He looked up with a start on Julian’s entrance, and an expression of comprehending concern dawned on his face. He was the messenger of the Welcome Diamond Mining Company. Before he could speak, however, a hoarse, peremptory question broke from Julian: