“Dora is going to marry you?”
“I believe she will do me that honour. And I consider it an honour. Miss Milburn will compare with any English girl I ever met. But I half expected you to congratulate me. I know she wrote to you this morning—you were one of the first.”
“I shall probably find the letter,” said Lorne mechanically, “when I go home.”
He still eyed Hesketh narrowly, as if he had somewhere concealed about him the explanation of this final bitter circumstance. He had a desire not to leave him, to stand and parley—to go upstairs to the office would be to plunge into the gulf. He held back from that and leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms and looking over into the market-place for subjects to postpone Hesketh’s departure. They talked of various matters in sight, Hesketh showing the zest of his newly determined citizenship in every observation—the extension of the electric tramway, the pulling down of the old Fire Hall. In one consciousness Lorne made concise and relevant remarks; in another he sat in a spinning dark world and waited for the crash.
It seemed to come when Hesketh said, preparing to go, “I’ll tell Miss Milburn I saw you. I suppose this change in your political prospects won’t affect your professional plans in any way you’ll stick on here, at the Bar?”
It was the very shock of calamity, and for the instant he could see nothing in the night of it but one far avenue of escape, a possibility he had never thought of seriously until that moment. The conception seemed to form itself on his lips, to be involuntary.
“I don’t know. A college friend has been pressing me for some time to join him in Milwaukee. He offers me plenty of work, and I am thinking seriously of closing with him.”
“Go over to the United States? You can’t mean that!”
“Oh yes—it’s the next best thing!”
Hesketh’s face assumed a gravity, a look of feeling and of remonstrance. He came a step nearer and put a hand on his companion’s arm.