  Until the actual moment of their parting at Euston, Saxham had never fully realised the anguish of the last moment when Lynette's face should pass for ever out of his thirsting sight. It was going.... He quickened his long strides to keep up with it. He must have called to her, for she came hurriedly to the corridor-window, her sweet cheeks suffused with lovely glowing colour, her sweet eyes shining, her small gloved hand held frankly out. He gripped it, uttered some incoherency—what, he could not remember—was shouted at by a porter with a greasy lamp-truck, cannoned heavily against a man with a basket of papers, awakened with a great pang to the knowledge that she was gone. And the great, bare, dirty, populous glass-hive of Euston, that has been the forcing-house of so many sorrowful partings, held another breaking heart. In the days that followed he saw his private patients as usual, and operated upon a regular mid-week morning at St. Stephen's, whose senior surgeon had recently resigned. The rest of the time he spent in making his arrangements. Sanely, logically, methodically, everything had been thought out. Major Wrynche was to be her guardian, co-trustee with Lord Castleclare, and executor of the Will. It left her, simply and unconditionally, everything of which Saxham was possessed. She would live with the Wrynches until she married again. His agents were instructed to find a tenant for the house, and privately a purchaser for the practice. They wrote to him of a client already found. Matters were progressing steadily. Very soon now the desired end. His table-lamp burned through the nights as he made up his ledgers and settled his accounts. In leisure moments he read in the intolerable book of the Past. Of all its sorrows |
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