"No," he said. "No--I haven't got the right,"
XVIII
That night, for almost the first time since he had adopted his
dual role, Loder slept ill. He was not a man over whom
imagination held any powerful sway--his doubts and misgivings
seldom ran to speculation, upon future possibilities;
nevertheless, the fact that, consciously or unconsciously, he
had adopted a new attitude towards Eve came home to him with
unpleasant force during the hours of darkness; and long before
the first hint of daylight had slipped through the heavy
window-curtains he had arranged a plan of action--a plan
wherein, by the simple method of altogether avoiding her, he
might soothe his own conscience and safeguard Chilcote's
domestic interests.
It was a satisfactory if a somewhat negative arrangement, and
he rose next morning with a feeling that things had begun to
shape themselves. But chance sometimes has a disconcerting
knack of forestalling even our best-planned schemes. He
dressed slowly, and descended to his solitary breakfast with
the pleasant sensation of having put last night out of
consideration by the turning over of a new leaf; but scarcely
had he opened Chilcote's letters, scarcely had he taken a
cursory glance at the morning's newspaper, than it was borne
in upon him that not only a new leaf, but a whole sheaf of new
leaves, had been turned in his prospects--by a hand infinitely
more powerful and arbitrary than his own.
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