"You would do as much for me," replied Nevill. "I'm going to see you through your trouble."
Jack walked abruptly to the open window, and looked out into the starry night.
"What does it matter," he thought, "whether I am rid of Diane or not? I have lost my darling. Madge is dead to me. I can't grasp it yet. How can I tell her?—how can I live without her?"
"Are you going up to town, Jimmie?" Nevill asked. "My cab is waiting, and you can share it."
"No; I shall stop with poor old Jack," Jimmie replied. "I don't like to leave him alone."
"That's good of you. It's a terrible blow, isn't it?"
Nevill went away, and Jimmie remained to comfort his friend. But there was no consolation for Jack, whose bitter mood had turned to dull despair and grief that would be more poignant in the morning, when he would be better able to comprehend the fell blow that had shattered his happiness and crushed his ambitions and dreams. He refused pipe and cigars. Until three o'clock he sat staring vacantly at the floor, seemingly oblivious of Jimmie's presence, and occasionally helping himself to brandy. At last he fell asleep in the chair, and Jimmie, who had with difficulty kept his eyes open, dozed away on the couch.
Meanwhile, Victor Nevill had driven straight to his rooms in Jermyn street and had gone to bed. He rose about ten o'clock, and after a light breakfast he sat down and wrote a short letter, cleverly disguising his own hand, and imitating the scrawly penmanship and bad spelling of an illiterate woman.
"The last card in the game," he reflected, as he addressed and stamped the envelope. "It may be superfluous, in case he sees or writes to her to-day. But he won't do that—he will put off the ordeal as long as possible. My beautiful Madge, for your sake I am steeping myself in infamy! It is not the first time a man has sold himself to the devil for a woman. Yet why should I feel any scruples? It would have been far worse to let them go on living in their fool's paradise."
An hour later, as he walked down Regent street, he posted the letter he had written in the morning.