"Good night."
"Good night."
Thank Heaven, she was gone. That let him out for another twelve hours
at least.
A quarter of an hour later found Roland still sitting, where she had
left him, his head in his hands. The groan of an overwrought soul
escaped him.
"I can't do it!"
He sprang to his feet.
"I won't do it."
A smooth voice from behind him spoke.
"I think you are quite right, sir--if I may make the remark."
Roland had hardly ever been so startled in his life. In the first
place, he was not aware of having uttered his thoughts aloud; in the
second, he had imagined that he was alone in the room. And so, a moment
before, he had been.
But the owner of the voice possessed, among other qualities, the cat-like
faculty of entering a room perfectly noiselessly--a fact which had won for
him, in the course of a long career in the service of the best families,
the flattering position of star witness in a number of England's raciest
divorce-cases.
Mr. Teal, the butler--for it was no less a celebrity who had broken in
on Roland's reverie--was a long, thin man of a somewhat priestly cast
of countenance.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131