Loving is such sweet pain. I learned it then!
And hardly had I loosed her, than some one came upon us. It was Sir Haselton Jardine. I saw his well-regulated eyelids suffered to open to enable him to shoot one of his swift glances. I saw his lips wrinkled by his imitation of a smile. And he said--
"I hope I do not interrupt you. I am but now arrived from town."
Dora, all rosy red, ran into his arms.
"Father!" she cried.
"My dear!" Then to me, "How are you, Townsend? I said I thought it possible that you might have something to say to me before you went away."
"I trust, sir, that I may have."
I believe that I, myself, was blushing like any boy.
While we were standing there--forming, no doubt, a sufficiently awkward group--Tommy Verulam came running in. He seemed to have recovered from the effects of his little episode with Archie. He was quite excited.
"I say, I've just been looking at the London papers. It seems that they've got the chap who murdered the woman at Three Bridges."