In England we have thoroughly acquired the art of domestic comfort. And we have the means to carry our knowledge into effect.
All other nations feel it. There is hardly a civilized person in the world who would not own that in England we have solved the riddle of making ourselves perfectly comfortable.
Aunt Bee's competent hands still ruled over Normansgrave. During the two years which had elapsed since the disappearance of his brother Felix, the Squire had not married, neither was he engaged to be married.
During the first months following the bereavement, with its curious and mysterious surrounding circumstances, it had been natural that Denzil should withdraw himself somewhat from society. But as weeks rolled by, and the police found no clew, there was nothing for it but to acquiesce in the uncertainty, and to assume either that Felix was dead, or that he wished to be thought so.
The newspapers had, of course, made the most of the mystery. They had flung it forth in flaming headlines, they had printed the letters written by the suicide, they had striven to whip up flagging interest by suggesting clews which the police had not really found. One enterprising journal actually had a competition, "Where is Felix Vanston?"
All kinds of letters and answers were sent in, and the Editor promised a prize, when the truth should at last be brought to light, to the competitor who had guessed nearest to the truth.
In the December of that year, when the trees lost their leaves, and a man's decomposed corpse was found in a thicket in one of the London parks, the whole hateful discussion leapt from its ashes and revived in full force. Was it, or was it not, Felix Vanston?
The police thought that it was. No identification was possible, the thing had had too many months in which to decompose. But in what had been a pocket was a newspaper; and this, being folded very small, the date was legible on one of the innermost pages: and it was the date of the disappearance from the Deptford lodging.
Denzil and Miss Rawson, in the absence of more cogent proof than this, declined to accept the remains as being those of the missing youth.
The Editor of the paper who had started the competition, however, awarded the prize to the candidate who had foreshadowed such a discovery.