It had only remained for him to quote
Genesis, and the talking serpent!
Had the case been in his own hands he would have intervened before now.
Rogers, on the contrary, was still satisfied with the shape of affairs--
or made pretence to be. For, watching lynx-eyed, Mahony fancied each
time the fat man propelled his paunch out of the sickroom it was a shade
less surely: there were nuances, too, in the way he pronounced his
vapid: "As long as our strength is well maintained . . . well
maintained." Mahony doubted Polly's ability to bear much more; and he
made bold to know his own wife's constitution best. Rogers was
shilly-shallying: what if he delayed too long and Polly slipped through
his hands? Lose Polly? Good God! the very thought turned him cold. And
alive to his finger-tips with the superstition of his race, he impetuously
offered up his fondest dream to those invisible powers that sat aloft,
waiting to be appeased. If this was to be the price exacted of him--the
price of his escape from exile--then. . . then . . .
To come back to the present, however, he was in an awkward position: he
was going to be forced to take Polly's case out of the hands of the man
to whom he had entrusted it. Such a step ran counter to all the stiff
rules of conduct, the punctilios of decorum, laid down by the most
code-ridden profession in the world.
But a fresh visit to Polly, whose pulse had grown markedly softer, put
an end to his scruples.
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