"I am going to buy a share in my father's business and go back to the wine trade," Leonard decided. "Half this money will make a new man of him."
"I am going to marry Rose," I declared.
"But you haven't asked me!" she protested indignantly.
"The year's up, I suppose, old fellow," he said, with a sigh. "We both ask you to marry us, Rose."
"Bolshevists!" she exclaimed.
"I mean we ask you to choose," he corrected.
She gave me her hand. Leonard drank a glass of champagne in gloomy silence and afterwards shook hands with both of us. Rose and he exchanged a few earnest sentences. Mr. Thomson spoke a valedictory word.
"My friends," he said, "to-night we part. I have helped, I hope, to bring colour into your lives. I ask but one thing of you in return, and that is—silence for twelve months."
We promised, and we kept our word.