The other nodded. Edwards returned to the letter, reading aloud, in detached scraps, his voice giving evidence of his astonishment and dismay.
"Beratinsky, allowed the option of undertaking the duty from which you are released, accepts—it is his only chance, I suppose—poor devil! what chance is it, after all?" He put the letter back on the table. "What is all this that has happened, Brand?"
Brand did not answer. He had risen to his feet; he stood like one bound with chains; there was suffering and an infinite pity in the haggard face.
"Why is not Natalie here?" he said; and it was strange that two men so different from each other as Brand and Calabressa should in such a crisis have had the same instinctive thought. The lives and fates of men were nothing; it was the heart of a girl that concerned them. "They will tell her—some of them over there—they will tell her suddenly that her father is condemned to die! Why is she—among—among strangers?"
He pulled out his watch hastily, but long ago the night-mail had left for Dover. At this moment the bell rung below,
and he started; it was unusual for them to have a visitor at such an hour.
"It is only that drunken fool Kirski," Edwards said. "I asked him to come here to-night."