Whats Bred In The Bone | Page 8

for
you. Perhaps"--and he hesitated--"perhaps I'd better let it go on for an
hour or two more, and then, whenever the air begins to get very
oppressive--I mean when one begins to feel it's really failing us--one
person, you know, could live on so much longer than two... it would be
a pity not to let you stand every chance. Perhaps I might---"
Elma gazed at him aghast in the utmost horror. She knew what he
meant at once. She didn't even need that he should finish his sentence.
"Never!" she said, firmly clenching her small hand hard. "It's so wrong
of you to think of it, even. I could never permit it. It's your duty to keep
yourself alive at all hazards as long as ever you can. You should
remember your mother, your sisters, your family."
"Why, that's just it," Cyril answered, a little crestfallen, and feeling he
had done quite a wicked thing in venturing to suggest that his
companion should have every chance for her own life. "I've got no
mother, you see, no sisters, no family. Nobody on earth would ever be
one penny the worse if I were to die, except my twin brother; he's the
only relation I ever had in my life; and even HE, I dare say, would very
soon get over it. Whereas YOU"--he paused and glanced at her

compassionately--"there are probably many to whom the loss would be
a very serious one. If I could do anything to save you---" He broke off
suddenly, for Elma looked up at him once more with a little burst of
despair.
"If you talk like that," she cried, with a familiarity that comes of
association in a very great danger, "I don't know what I shall do; I don't
know what I shall say to you. 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. For the two Warings were truly "as like as two
peas"; a photograph of one might almost have done duty for the

photograph of the other.
The other occupant of the room, who leaned carelessly against the
mantelshelf, was taller and older; though he, too, was handsome, but
with the somewhat cynical and unprepossessing handsomeness of a
man of the world. His forehead was high; his lips were thin; his nose
inclined toward the Roman pattern; his black moustache was carefully
curled and twisted at the extremities. Moreover, he was musical; for he
held in one hand the bow of a violin, having just laid down the
instrument itself on the sofa after a plaintive duet with Guy Waring.
"Seen this evening's paper, by the way, Guy?" he asked, after a pause,
in a voice that was all honeyed charm and seductiveness. "I brought the
St. James's Gazette for you, but forgot to give you it; I was so full of
this new piece of mine. Been an accident this morning, I see, on the
Great Southern line. Somewhere down Cyril's way, too; he's painting
near Chetwood; wonder whether he could possibly, by any chance,
have been in it?"
He drew the paper carelessly from his pocket as he spoke, and handed
it with a graceful air of inborn courtesy to his younger companion.
Everything that Montague Nevitt