“You know the truth, my dear. My secrets are, unfortunately, his?”
And she echoed his sigh with her white lips compressed. She foresaw, alas! that for her there was no hope of escape from that hideous compact she had been compelled to make. She had given herself as the price of her father’s honour, the price of his very life, to a man whom she could neither trust nor love—a man who, when it suited his own interests, would break his bond without the slightest compunction, and allow the crushing blow to fall upon her house—a blow that must be fatal to her beloved father, who stood there so grave and thoughtful at her side.
She contemplated the future, but saw in it only a grey, limitless sea of blank despair.
Chapter Twenty Five.
Billy Grenfell is Philosophic.
“Then we must break up the home, I suppose?”
“I suppose so, Billy, much as I regret it. But a fellow has to take advantage of the main chance in his life, you know, and this is mine?” declared George Macbean, leaning back in his padded chair at the breakfast-table in their high-up old room in Fig Tree Court, Temple.
“I should think so! An appointment in the Italian Ministry of War at such a salary isn’t an offer that comes to every man, and you’d be a fool if you didn’t accept it. You must have some high official friend whom you’ve never told me about—eh?” And William Grenfell, barrister-at-law, known as “Billy” to his intimates, with whom Macbean shared chambers, took up his friend’s letter and re-read it, asking, “What’s the signature? These foreigners sign their names in such an abominable manner that nobody can ever read them.”