They crossed the hall together, but as
they reached the drawing-room door, Mr. Carrington discovered that he
had dropped a letter in the dining-room, and returned to find it, first
opening the drawing-room door that Dale might pass through it.
All was undisturbed in the dining-room; the table was just as they had
left it. Victor approached the table, took up the carafon containing
curacoa, and, holding it up to the light with one hand, poured the
contents of a small phial into it with the other. He watched the one
liquid mingling with the other until no further traces of the operation
were visible; and then setting the carafon softly down where he had
found it, went smiling across the hall and joined the ladies.
CHAPTER XXX.
FOUND WANTING.
Reginald Eversleigh was in complete ignorance of Victor Carrington's
proceedings, when he received the letter summoning him to an interview
with his friend at a stated time. Carrington's estimate of Reginald's
character was quite correct. All this time his vanity had been chafing
under Paulina's silence and apparent oblivion of him.
He had not received any letter from Paulina, fond as she had been of
writing to him long, half-despairing letters, full of complaint against
destiny, and breathing in every line that hopeless love which the
beautiful Austrian woman had so long wasted on the egotist and coward,
whose baseness she had half suspected even while she still clung to
him.
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