His emotion choked him. He was dropping into the chair by the bedside, when he noticed that the back and seat of the chair were strewn with the under-clothing, which the child had evidently placed there when disrobing.
With eyes blinded with tears, he lifted the dainty garments in a pile, and laid them on the foot of the bed. Then he dropped back into the chair, buried his face in the pillow—the impress of the lost, beautiful head was left in the pillow—and wept.
For five minutes he remained thus. Then rousing himself, he muttered:—“I must play the man! and get back to the office and lay hold of things.”
He left the room, and managed to clear the house without encountering his landlady. Lucky in finding a hansom, he had himself driven first to the central News Agency. He wanted to find out if anything of the mystery was generally known.
The careless-minded, light-hearted tapists, clerks and journalists, were laughing over the few vague rumours of the translation that had reached them.
He said nothing of what he knew, and drove on to the office.
“If the world has to go on, for a time, just as it has been going, in spite of this wonderful thing,” he muttered, “then, as acting editor of the Courier, I had better stifle every feeling, save the professional, and give London—England—the best morning issue under the new condition of things.”
CHAPTER XXV.
FOILED!
Thin and pale, but with the likeness of God shining in her dark eyes—there was the bruise-like colour of great exhaustion under each eye—Mrs. Joyce sat wearily stitching at her warehouse needle-work.