A moment later, arrived at the top of the hill, it dropped over the crest and sank out of sight.
* * * * *
It was twelve days later that Mr. Peter Every found his cake to be dough.
Taking advantage of a general invitation, issued when he was six years old, he had asked himself to Bell Hammer ostensibly to enjoy a day's hunting, but in reality with the express intention of inviting Miss Valerie French to become his lady-wife.
All things considered, it was rather hard that before he had been in the house for an hour and a half he should himself have pulled his airy castle incontinently about his ears.
This was the way of it.
It was that soft insidious hour which begins when it is time to dress for dinner and ends in horrified exclamation and a rush for the bath. Valerie, seated at the piano, was playing Massenet's Elégie, and Every was lolling in a deep chair before the fire, studying a map of the county and thinking upon the morrow's hunt. In such circumstances it is not surprising that the printed appearance of Saddle Tree Cross should have remembered Lyveden.
"By the way, Val," he said, raising his voice to override the music, "I met a pal of yours the other day."
Valerie raised her eyebrows and continued to play.
"Did you?" she said, without turning. "Who was that?"