She prepared to leave the room. He took her hand, kissed it
gallantly, and showed her out. It was his way--too civil to be real.
Blindly she made her way to her room. Inside, she suddenly swayed and
sank fainting to the ground, as Kate Heaver ran forward to her. Kate saw
the letter in the clinched hand. Loosening it, she read two or three
sentences with a gasp. They contained Tom Lacey's appeal for David. She
lifted Hylda's head to her shoulder with endearing words, and chafed the
cold hands, murmuring to herself the while.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE QUESTIONER
"What has thee come to say?"
Sitting in his high-backed chair, Luke Claridge seemed a part of its
dignified severity. In the sparsely furnished room with its uncarpeted
floor, its plain teak table, its high wainscoting and undecorated walls,
the old man had the look of one who belonged to some ancient consistory,
a judge whose piety would march with an austerity that would save a human
soul by destroying the body, if need be.
A crisis had come, vaguely foreseen, sombrely eluded.
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