But no such weapon was there, and he lay in his
splendid gilt bed and groaned aloud as he covered his eyes with his
hand.
The light hurt him--he was giddy, and his head swam. Surely, among other
things in the half-indistinct nightmare of the preceding evening, he
must have had too much champagne.
From the moment, now over a week ago, that he had been allowed to sit up
in bed, and more or less distinct thought had come back to him, he had
been a prey to hideous anxiety and grief. Halcyone was gone from
him--had been snatched away by Fate, who, with relentless
vindictiveness, had filled his cup. For the first letters that he
opened, marked from his lawyers so urgently that they had been given to
him before the bandages were off his head, contained the gravest news of
his financial position. The chief mortgagee intended to foreclose in the
course of the next three months, unless an arrangement could be come to
at once, which appeared impossible.
He was actually at bay. Thus, although in his first moments of
consciousness, he had intended to go directly he was well and demand his
love openly and chance the rest, this news made that course now quite
out of the question.
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