"You do wrong to make enemies, shrewd sir" (thus his thoughts ran); "they are more zealous against you, more determined for victory, when they scent the coming battle. You are a fool, shrewd sir, for all your cleverness. Your sun is setting, and you see not the shadows beyond. But the veil shall soon be drawn by willing hands. With what truth could Robert say:
"I, as thou knowest, went forth, and my heart with sorrow oppressed, Where ruthless Fate had bestowed what I needed for life and rest.
We are but instruments in the hands of Fate. Sooner or later the ax shall fall."
He had an idle hour before his appointment with Robert Grantham, and instinctively he had turned his steps in the direction of Mr. Fox-Cordery's house. As he walked on the opposite side of the street he saw a miserably-clad woman, whose face, equally with her dress, was a melancholy index to her woeful state, standing at the door, exchanging words with a servant who had responded to her knock. Crossing the road, he heard something of what was passing between them, and learned that Mr. Fox-Cordery was in the country. Closer contact with the woman disclosed more plainly to him that she was destitute and in sore trouble, and he was particularly struck at the half-defiant and wholly reckless tone in which she spoke. The door was shut upon her, and she was left standing in the street. Then he observed that she directed a threatening and despairing look at the house; and, as she was walking slowly away, he went up and asked her if he could be of any assistance to her, and whether she would tell him what she wanted with Mr. Fox-Cordery. It was Martha he accosted, but she would have nothing to say to him. Bidding him sullenly to mind his own business, she quickened her steps to a run and disappeared. He reproached himself afterward for not hastening after her, and tempting her with a bribe; for he felt that the woman had some bitter grievance against Mr. Fox-Cordery, and that she could have been of assistance in bringing him to bay. But he shrugged his shoulders, muttering "What is, is; what will be, will be," and followed in the direction she had taken, without, however, seeing her again.
CHAPTER XIV. Do you remember Billy's last prayer?