Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/397

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Dies Iræ
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the clerk of Mr. Vane, the magistrate. There was not only Miss Drake of the motor-car, but also Miss Drake’s chauffeur. Nothing wild or unfamiliar could have produced upon Turnbull such a nightmare impression as that ring of familiar faces. Yet he had one intellectual shock which was greater than all the others. He stepped impulsively forward toward Madeleine, and then wavered with a kind of wild humility. As he did so he caught sight of another square face behind Madeleine’s, a face with long gray whiskers and an austere stare. It was old Durand, the girl’s father; and when Turnbull saw him he saw the last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He remembered Durand; he remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his stupefyingly sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with truisms merely because they were true. “Confound it all!” cried Turnbull to himself, “if he is in the asylum, there can’t be any one outside.” He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully and all the more so because she still smiled at him. MacIan had already gone across to Beatrice with an air of right.

Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were cloven by a cruel voice which