Of course there was no response. After waiting for a few moments, the men broke in the frail door. But they were too late.
Norah Burton, and the man who had been so long associated with her—brother, cousin, lover, whatever he might be—had gone to their judgment.
It was a nine-days' wonder, and while his friends and acquaintances were still discussing it at clubs and over tea-tables, Guy Spencer slipped quietly abroad. When he returned to England, at the end of twelve months, these tragic happenings had become little more than a memory to his world.
He stayed a week with the Southleighs at their ancestral home in Sussex, and at the end of that week their friends read an important announcement in The Morning Post:
"A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Mr. Guy Spencer and his cousin, Lady Nina, only daughter and child of the Earl of Southleigh."