I've got to speak for
the Government myself to-morrow." And he hurried away toward the
house.
In the silence that followed, a very bewildering silence so far as
March was concerned, they saw the quaint figure of the Duke of
Westmoreland, with his white hat and whiskers, approaching them
across the garden. Fisher instantly stepped toward him with the pink
paper in his hand, and, with a few words, pointed out the
apocalyptic paragraph. The duke, who had been walking slowly, stood
quite still, and for some seconds he looked like a tailor's dummy
standing and staring outside some antiquated shop. Then March heard
his voice, and it was high and almost hysterical:
"But he must see it; he must be made to understand. It cannot have
been put to him properly." Then, with a certain recovery of fullness
and even pomposity in the voice, "I shall go and tell him myself."
Among the queer incidents of that afternoon, March always remembered
something almost comical about the clear picture of the old
gentleman in his wonderful white hat carefully stepping from stone
to stone across the river, like a figure crossing the traffic in
Piccadilly. Then he disappeared behind the trees of the island, and
March and Fisher turned to meet the Attorney-General, who was coming
out of the house with a visage of grim assurance.
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