The fate of the chocolate blanc-mange hung in the balance for a brief moment. If to eat it would seem to be a slight to the curate, to leave it would be a slight to the countess. The outcome was a compromise in which the honors and the blanc-mange were evenly divided.
Hester was glad when the meal drew to a close. Waiting on the table had been a nerve racking experience for her. Only the thought that she might pick up some chance clue as to the golf bag's whereabouts had nerved her to the undertaking.
Now it was over and nothing had come of it—not a single word about golf or golf bags. All the talk had been about the old parson who was late for dinner. Probably he had fallen into another mole trap or caught his whiskers in a bramble bush!
Hester was startled from these irreverent reflections by the utterance of the very word she had been listening for. The coffee cup she was in the act of handing to the countess shook perilously on its tiny saucer.
"A golf bag is a funny thing for a secretary to be carting about," Robert Baxter was saying, "but there it was, and the day Mother borrowed it——"
"By Jove!" interrupted Lionel, checking his half-raised arm. "That's where the old boy went!"
He drained his cup quickly and put it down. It was coming out in exasperating driblets like a magazine story and Hester, suddenly busy at the sideboard, waited breathlessly for the next instalment.
"I heard Miss Thompson call out to him from the motor," went on Lionel, "just as they were starting this morning, that if he cared to get her golf bag he could use the clubs all he wanted."
There was another maddening pause. Hester had reached the limit of her endurance; she couldn't go on rearranging the silver on the sideboard forever. She had an insane impulse to shriek. Then, suddenly, the suspense was over. Robert supplied the missing link.
"Cousin Horatio could hardly get lost on his way to the club house," he reflected, pushing back his chair as Kate started to rise, "but I'll run round in the car and inquire if he was there this afternoon. Why don't you have a look round the lake?" he turned to Lionel.