It cannot be shattered and put
together again.'
She turned and began to walk up the drive. Hanging over the top of
the gate like a wet sock, Lord Dawlish watched her go. The
interview was over, and he could not think of one single thing to
say. Her white dress made a patch of light in the shadows. She
moved slowly, as if weighed down by sad thoughts, like one who, as
Luella Delia Philpotts beautifully puts it, paces with measured
step behind the coffin of a murdered heart. The bend of the drive
hid her from his sight.
About twenty minutes later Dudley Pickering, smoking sentimentally
in the darkness hard by the porch, received a shock. He was musing
tenderly on his Claire, who was assisting him in the process by
singing in the drawing-room, when he was aware of a figure, the
sinister figure of a man who, pressed against the netting of the
porch, stared into the lighted room beyond.
Dudley Pickering's first impulse was to stride briskly up to the
intruder, tap him on the shoulder, and ask him what the devil he
wanted; but a second look showed him that the other was built on
too ample a scale to make this advisable. He was a large,
fit-looking intruder.
Mr Pickering was alarmed. There had been the usual epidemic of
burglaries that season. Houses had been broken into, valuable
possessions removed.
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