Why, I couldn't bear to
be left alone here to die by myself. If only for MY sake, now we're
boxed up here together, I think you ought to wait and do the best
you can for yourself."
"Very well," Cyril answered once more, in a most obedient tone. "If
you wish me to live to keep you company in the tunnel, I'll live
while I may. You have only to say what you wish. I'm here to wait
upon you."
In any other circumstances, such a phrase would have been a mere
piece of conversational politeness. At that critical moment, Elma
knew it for just what it was--a simple expression of his real
feeling.
CHAPTER III.
CYRIL WARING'S BROTHER.
It was nine o'clock that self-same night, and two men sat together
in a comfortable sitting-room under the gabled roofs of Staple
Inn, Holborn. It was as cosy a nook as any to be found within the
four-mile radius, and artistic withal in its furniture and decorations.
In the biggest arm-chair by the empty grate, a young man with a
flute paused for a moment, irresolute. He was a handsome young man,
expressive eyes, and a neatly-cut brown beard--for all the world
like Cyril Waring's. Indeed, if Elma Clifford could that moment have
been transported from her gloomy prison in the Lavington tunnel to
that cosy room at Staple Inn, Holborn, she would have started with
surprise to find the young man who sat in the arm-chair was to all
outer appearance the self-same person as the painter she had just
left at the scene of the accident.
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