Chapter Twenty One.
Sows Seeds of Suspicion.
Chisholm with uneven steps walked back to the big writing-table, turned up the reading-lamp and, seating himself, began to put the many official papers quickly in order, signing some, destroying others, and now and then making marginal notes on those to be returned to the Foreign Office. Many of the more unimportant documents he consigned to the waste-paper basket, but the others he arranged carefully, sorted them, and placed them in several of the large official envelopes upon which the address was printed, together with the bold words “On Her Majesty’s Service.”
The light of hope had died from his well-cut features. His countenance was changed, grey, anxious, with dark haggard eyes and trembling lips. When, at last, he had finished, he rose again with a strange smile of bitterness. He crossed to the portion of the book-lined wall that was merely imitation, opened it, and with the key upon his chain took from the small safe concealed there the envelope secured by the black seal, and the small piece of folded paper which contained the lock of fair hair—his most cherished possession.
He opened the paper and stood with the golden curl in the palm of his hand, gazing upon it long and earnestly.
“Hers!” he moaned in a voice that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “If she were here I wonder what would be her advice? I might long ago have confided in her, told her all, and asked her help. She would have given it. Yes, she was my friend, and would have sacrificed her very life to save me. But it is all over. I am alone—utterly alone.”
Tears stood in his eyes as he raised the love-token slowly and reverently to his lips. Then he spoke again:
“For me there only remains the punishment of Heaven. And yet in those days how childishly happy we were—how perfect was our love! Is it an actual reality that I’m standing here to-night for the last time, or is it a dream? No,” he added, his teeth clenched in firmness, “it’s no dream. The end has come!”