He held it up to the light, examining it critically, with a sad smile playing about his thin white lips. Presently he put it down, and with both hands pushed the hair wearily from his fevered forehead.
“Shall I write to Claudia?” he asked himself in a hoarse voice, scarcely louder than a whisper. “Shall I leave her a letter confessing all and asking forgiveness?”
For a long time he pondered over the suggestion that had thus come to him.
“No,” he said at last, “it would be useless, and my sin would only cause my memory to be more hateful. Ah, no!” he murmured; “to leave the world in silence is far the best. The coroner’s jury will return a verdict to the effect that I was of unsound mind. Juries don’t return verdicts of felo-de-se nowadays. The time of stakes and cross-roads has passed.”
And he laughed harshly again, for now that he had placed all his affairs in order a strange carelessness in regard to existence had come upon him.
“To-morrow, when I am found, the papers—those same papers that have boomed me, as they term it—will discover in my end a startling sensation. All sorts of ridiculous rumours will be afloat. Parliament will gossip when it meets; but in a week my very name will be forgotten. One memorial alone will remain of me, my name engraved upon the tablet in the house of the Royal Geographical Society as its gold-medallist. And nothing else—absolutely nothing.”
Again he paused. After a few minutes had passed he stretched out his trembling hand and took the glass.
“What will the world say of me, I wonder?” he exclaimed in a hoarse tone. “Will they declare that I was a coward?”
“Yes,” came an answering voice, low, but quite distinct within the old brown room, “the world will surely say that Dudley Chisholm was a coward—a coward!”
He sprang to his feet in alarm, dashing the glass down on the table, and, turning quickly to the spot whence the answer had come, found himself face to face with an intruder who had evidently been concealed behind the heavy curtains of dark red velvet before the window, and who had heard everything and witnessed all his agony.