Page:The council of seven.djvu/308

 "tell me—tell me what is the matter? Why do you look like that? What awful thing has happened?"

He did not answer. She repeated the question with a tenser anxiety. "What is the matter? Do tell me!"

It was impossible for him to do so. In the urgency of the moment he did what he could to keep back the truth. But at the best, it was a lame, clumsy, half-*hearted effort.

"You think you may have caught a slight chill motoring into the country yesterday?" An explanation so feeble could but add fuel to Helen's incredulity. Something far beyond that poor excuse was called for by those wild eyes and ashen cheeks.

"Not that I'm really ill," he managed to say. But the voice was not his. Hollow, spectral, thin, it might have been a ghost's.

She knew that he was ill indeed. Eyes of despair, now palpably shrinking from contact with hers, told her too clearly that he was suffering from a grave malady. Moreover she knew he was trying his utmost to conceal the fact from her.

Suddenly her eye lit on a sheet of foolscap lying on the carpet. In the agitation of the moment it had drifted, no doubt, from his writing table. It was covered with recent writing which had been left to dry.

As Helen picked up this document, she glanced at it, almost without a thought of what she did. A swift intuition told her that this was no ordinary paper.