"
Duncombe bowed his head to fate.
"Very well!" he said. "I will go!"
CHAPTER XIII
"HER VOICE."
"You have heard now," Duncombe said, finally, "the whole history of my
wanderings. I feel like a man who has been beating the air, who has been
at war with unseen and irresistible forces. I never seemed to have a
chance. In plain words, I have failed utterly!"
The two men were sitting in a room impossible of classification. It
might have been a study, smoking-room, or gun-room. The walls were
adorned with stags' heads and various trophies of the chase. There were
guns and rifles in plenty in a rack by the chimney-piece, a row of
bookcases along the north wall, golf clubs, cricket bats, and foils
everywhere. A pile of logs ready for burning stood in the open grate,
and magnificent rugs were spread about the floor. Nowhere was there the
slightest trace of a woman's presence, for Duncombe had no sisters, and
his was entirely a bachelor household.
Duncombe himself and Andrew Pelham were seated in great easy-chairs in
front of the open window. It was his first fine evening at home, and he
was drinking in great draughts of the fresh pure air, fragrant with the
perfume of roses and huge clusters of wallflowers.
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