“Head as bad as ever.”
“Oui!” Lucille said with a sigh. “All day; and now he is quite ‘done,’ and can keep up no longer. It is always so. What am I to write next? Ah, I am called! Somebody wants me. Will you excuse—till I come back?”
Jack amused himself during her absence by scrawling caricatures with his left hand upon the unfinished sheet. Then Lucille came swiftly in, running, as if with joy, while her eyes were full of tears. Her face seemed to shine, and a suppressed sob could be heard in her voice as she panted—
“Something for Captain Ivor!”
Denham looked up slowly as she came to his side; and, though he received the packet from her hand, he would have put it aside without attention.
“Ouvrez-le, ouvrez-le, vîte!” she urged impatiently.
“Who brought it?”
“A gentleman travelling from Paris. Ouvrez-le!”
Denham roused himself with difficulty to obey.
“A passport!” he said with listless surprise and a slight laugh. “Not the passport for Roy surely? Rather late in the day.”