Hilditch's as a temporary
butler. I wish I'd never seen any one of you! That's all. You
can go to Hell which way you like, only, if you take my advice,
you'll go by the way of South America. The scaffold isn't every
man's fancy."
There was a burr of the instrument and then silence. Sir Timothy
carefully replaced the receiver, paused on his way out of the
room to smell a great bowl of lavender, and passed back into the
garden.
"More applicants for invitations?" Lady Cynthia enquired lazily.
Her host smiled.
"Not exactly! Although," he added, "as a matter of fact my party
would have been perhaps a little more complete with the presence
of the person to whom I have been speaking."
Lady Cynthia pointed to the stream, down which the punt was
slowly drifting. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and Francis'
figure, as he stood there, was undefined and ghostly. A thought
seemed to flash into her mind. She leaned forward.
"Once," she said, "he told me that he was your enemy."
"The term is a little melodramatic," Sir Timothy protested. "We
look at certain things from opposite points of view. You see, my
prospective son-in-law, if ever he becomes that, represents the
law--the Law with a capital 'L'--which recognises no human errors
or weaknesses, and judges crime out of the musty books of the
law-givers of old.
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