"I must call on Mr. Needham before Sunday," he added inconsequently to his father.
"Eunice is at home just now, but she's going away on a visit to her aunt at Tewksbury next week," said Dora, and Mrs. Charles watched the face of her son anxiously as his sister spoke.
"Oh, indeed!" said Henry, without betraying any feeling.
CHAPTER XXIII
A TRAGIC ENDING
It was on a Friday that Henry arrived at Hampton. He had expected a telegram from Adrian Grant that evening, explaining his failure to join him at St. Pancras, but no word was received. Nor did Saturday morning bring a note. But it brought the morning papers and tragic news.
Henry was seated in the garden behind his father's house—a real old-world garden, with rudely-made paths and a charming tangle of flowers—gigantic hollyhocks, bright calceolarias, sweet-smelling jasmine, stocks, early asters and chrysanthemums, growing in rich profusion and in the most haphazard manner. The jasmine climbed over the trellis-work of the summer-seat, made long years ago by the hands of Edward John before he had grown stout and lazy, and now creaking aloud to be repaired.
He had come out here with a Birmingham morning paper in his hand—a paper which made his journalistic blood boil when he thought how intolerably dull and self-sufficient it was—and he had only opened it at the London letter when he saw a name that made him fumble the sheets quickly into small compass for close reading—Adrian Grant!