Page:A strange, sad comedy (IA strangesadcomedy00seawiala).pdf/274

262 talk until Madame de Fonblanque whispered to Chessingham:

"I believe he actually enjoys the situation!"

She herself longed to leave, yet hesitated. She thought if she stayed that perhaps at the end Mr. Romaine might grant her some words of forgiveness. She was a superstitious woman, and Mr. Romaine knew it. So, with a white face, she seated herself a little way off, at the side of the fireplace. Bridge came in and out of the room noiselessly, his feet sinking in the thick Turkish carpet. The room was strangely quiet, but the very intensity of the silence gave Mr. Romaine's voice and quivering breath and faint sounds of pain a fearful distinctness. And even in his extremity, the "situation," as Madame de Fonblanque called it, was not without its diversion to him.

"Corbin came with you, of course," Mr. Romaine said to Madame de Fonblanque after a while. He had at last consented to take a little brandy, although steadily refusing any of Chessingham's medicine, and seemed to be revived by it. Then he said to Chessingham:

"Pray, after I am dead, give my regards to Corbin, but don't let him examine my coffin plate. I desire my age put down as fifty-eight, and I won't have one of Corbin's long-winded