s still-born; a Medici never survives his
swaddling-clothes. Into the tiny graves are huddled a million
destinies. The sexton's shovel smothers up a Renaissance; soon the
daisies will blow above History. Those eyebrows are lifted, that lip
curls, and two fair homes go down in sorrow. This man misses a train,
to travel with Fortune in the one that follows. A horse is beaten on
the post, and the frantic clerk who has backed it goes for five years
to gaol. Five years.... What are five years to Fate? A
cable-operator nods over the Wheatstone, and a king loses his crown. A
witness hesitates, and an estate passes to the bastard and to his heirs
for ever....

And so the game goes on.

The living grains of sand go slipping and sliding into place in that
gigantic hour-glass, striving and fretting in their vanity, but always
impotently falling towards that thin neck, where days are numbered and
the punctilious turnstile ushers to those mysterious marches where
there is no more Time.

Look at them here.

Judge and maiden jostling a prelate--one upon either side--each of them
in a toss about the same Anthony Lyveden, yet neither aware of the
other's existence, and all four falling, while they fret, first into
place and presently, one by one, towards that thin neck where days are
numbered....

What? Have I whipped up a puppet without advising you? Bear with me,
sirs. 'Tis but the rustle of a gown--a silk knee against satin--upon
the staircase. In another moment I shall have opened the door.

The more Monseigneur Forest thought upon the matter, so suddenly thrust
smoking before him, the more uneasy he became. The kindest of men, he
found the picture of the poor legatee fighting for existence when, but
for another's remissness, he would have had a goodly heritage,
inexpressibly distressing. Indeed, could he have started for Rome that
night he would have done so. But for the knowledge that he was about
to do all in his power to rectify the wrong, he could not have slept.
As it was, the reflection that Anthony Lyveden had yet to be found
worried him greatly. It was, of course, most unfortunate that the
business had not cropped up before. Here he was on his way to
Hampshire, in response to a cry so instant that he had set everything
on one side, and now, however sore her need of him, his niece, Miss
Valerie French, would have to wait. Blood might be thicker than water,
but the poor pinched ghost that had been k