“I am too hungry for tea. Tell them to bring me a solid meal: cold beef—no, make it hot—that game pie we had at breakfast—anything there is, but as soon as possible. How refreshing this wind is!”
“Go and change, John,” his wife urged.
“Yes, I must, immediately: I shall be taking a chill.” As he half rose from his chair he saw the postman, turbaned, barefooted, crossing the grass from the road, and dropped back again.
“Here is the dâk,” he said; “I must just have a look first.”
Mrs. Church took her letters, and went into the house to give orders to the butler. Five minutes afterwards she came back, to find her husband sitting where she had left him, but upright in his chair and mechanically stroking his beard, with his face set. He had grown paler, if that was possible, but had lost every trace of lassitude. He had the look of being face to face with a realised contingency which his wife knew well.
“News, John?” she asked nervously; “anything important?”
“The most important—and the worst,” he answered steadily, without looking at her. His eyes were fixed on the floor, and on his course of action.
“What do you mean, dear? What has happened? May I see?”
For answer he handed her his private letter from Lord Scansleigh. She opened it with shaking fingers, and read the first sentence or two aloud. Then instinctively her voice stopped, and she finished it in silence. The Viceroy had written:—
“My dear Church: The accompanying official correspondence will show you our position, when the mail left England, with the Secretary of State. I fear that nothing has occurred in the meantime to improve it—in fact, one or two telegrams seem rather to point the other way. I will not waste your time and mine in idle regrets, if indeed they would be justifiable, but write only to assure you heartily in private, as I do formally in my official letter, that if we go we go together. I have already telegraphed this to Strathell, and will let you know the substance of his reply as soon as I receive it. I wish I could think that the prospect of my own resignation is likely to deter them from demanding yours, but I own to you that I expect our joint immolation will not be too impressive a sacrifice for the British Public in this connection.