“It wasn't that I came to talk about, my lord, but another and more painful matter.”
“Can I relieve you of the burden of your message, my child? It has reached me already. It is in all the morning newspapers.”
“I didn't think of that. Still the doctor told me to——”
“What does the doctor say about him?”
“He says——”
“Yes?”
“He says we are going to lose him.”
“I have sent for a great surgeon—But no doubt it is past help. Poor boy! It seems only yesterday he came up to London so full of hope and expectation. I can see him now with his great eyes, sitting in that chair you occupy, talking of his plans and purposes. Poor John! To think he should come to this! But these tumultuous souls whose hearts are battlefields, when the battle is over what can be left but a waste?”
Glory's eyes had dried of themselves and she was looking at the old man with an expression of pain, but he went on without observing her:
“It is one of the dark riddles of the inscrutable Power which rules over life that the good man can go under like that, while the evil one lives and prospers.”