Brandon, Ryle and Bentinck-Major were against.
"I'm afraid," said the Dean, smiling anxiously, "that it will be for me to give the casting vote." He paused for a moment. Then, looking straight across the table at the Clerk, he said:
"I think I must decide for the roller. Canon Ronder seems to me to have proved his case."
Every one, except possibly Ronder, was aware that this was the first occasion for many years that any motion of Brandon's had been defeated....
Without waiting for any further business the Archdeacon gathered together his papers and, looking neither to right nor left, strode from the room.
Book II
The Whispering Gallery
Chapter I
Five O'Clock--The Green Cloud
The cloud seemed to creep like smoke from the funnel of the Cathedral tower. The sun was setting in a fiery wreath of bubbling haze, shading in rosy mist the mountains of grey stone. The little cloud, at first in the shadowy air light green and shaped like a ring, twisted spirally, then, spreading, washed out and lay like a pool of water against the smoking sunset.