“Perhaps you will when you have heard the piece of news which I mentioned earlier in our conversation that I had for you.”
“Well?”
“I proposed to your cousin at the Gunton-Cresswells’s dance tonight, and she accepted me.”
The news had a surprising effect on Julian. First he blinked. Then he craned his head forward in the manner of a deaf man listening with difficulty.
Then he left the room without a word.
He had not been gone two minutes when there were three short, sharp taps at my window.
Julian returned? Impossible. Yet who else could have called on me at that hour?
I went to the front door, and opened it.
On the steps stood the Rev. John Hatton. Beside him Sidney Price. And, lurking in the background, Tom Blake of the Ashlade and Lechton.
(End of James Orlebar Cloister’s narrative.)