With sudden resolution, Thorpe moved forward and joined
the conversation.
CHAPTER VI
THORPE'S life-long habit of early rising brought him downstairs
next morning before anybody else in the house, apparently,
was astir. At all events, he saw no one in either the hall
or the glass vestibule, as he wandered about. Both doors
were wide open, however, to the mild, damp morning air.
He found on one of the racks a cap that was less uncomfortable
than the others, and sauntered forth to look about him.
His nerves were by no means in so serene a state as his reason
told him they ought to be. The disquieting impression of bad
dreams hung about him. The waking hour--always an evil
time for him in these latter days of anxiety--had been this
morning a peculiarly depressing affair. It had seemed
to him, in the first minutes of reviving consciousness,
that he was a hopelessly ruined and discredited man;
the illusion of disaster had been, indeed, so complete
and vivid that, even now, more than an hour later,
he had not shaken off its effects.
He applied his mental energies, as he strolled along
the gravel paths, to the task of reassuring himself.
There were still elements of chance in the game,
of course, but it was easy enough, here in the daylight,
to demonstrate that they had been cut down to a minimum--that
it was nonsense to borrow trouble about them.
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