"What am I to do? In Heavens name, what am I to do?" Eversleigh asked himself, while his heart seemed to be contracting under the unrelenting grip of a hand of iron.
Ruin, black ruin!
It was coming very near, very near!
And worse than ruin.
Infamy!
Again, as often before, he saw the convict's cell, the desolate home, the wife and children whom he loved for ever disgraced.
The cold sweat of terror, of despair, stood on the brows of the wretched man, who shook and trembled as with palsy. He had a swooning sense that he was standing in the midst of a dissolving world, a wreck amidst a myriad of wrecks all whirling on to some dark abyss. He felt as if his brain were giving way under these repeated shocks; then a merciful blankness and vacuity of thought and impression suddenly descended upon him.
Williamson, coming into the room later, found Eversleigh in a faint stretched across the table.
The head-clerk regarded his principal curiously; then he proceeded, before attempting to resuscitate Eversleigh, to look carefully over the papers lying on the table. Amongst them, however, he saw nothing that was of a specially suspicious character, unless it was Bennet's letter. Having satisfied himself on this point, Williamson next endeavoured to revive his master.
"I am afraid you're trying to do too much," he observed to Eversleigh, when the latter had recovered. "Now that Mr. Silwood is gone, your work is doubled."