THE SILVER CORD.
BY SHIRLEY BROOKS.
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CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
Yet Laura might have safely and discreetly surrendered the volume to the applicant on board the boat. For he was not, as she naturally suspected, a hostile emissary, but an agent who had been employed at the desire of Charles Hawkesley, and by concert between him and the chief of the police. They had better reasons for the precaution than she could imagine.
Hawkesley, on returning from the bureau, after hearing the views of M. , had gone to the apartment of Arthur Lygon, and had apprised him of the catastrophe at Versailles.
Rarely has terrible news wrought such a change in the hearer as did these tidings cause in the hitherto impassive Lygon. He had listened in the calmest silence to the short introduction by which Hawkesley sought to approach the subject without undue abruptness, and had waited steadily for the narrative of the issue of the conflict; but when his brother-in-law announced that Urquhart was no more, the eyes of Lygon suddenly lighted up, his face reassumed its long-lost expression of determination and self-reliance, and—it was a small trait, but characteristic of the man—he rose and gave a brief, business-like glance at the mirror, as if to satisfy himself that he was duly qualified to mingle again in the world upon its own terms. Then he turned to Hawkesley.
“Poor Robert! He deserved better than to die by such a hand. Has Adair been arrested?”
“No.”
“You do not mean that he has escaped?”
“For the present.”
“The police have let him escape?”
“They have not yet secured him.”
“So much for the boasted French police! We will see whether our English heads can help them. You will come with me to Versailles?”
And with an alacrity which he had not displayed