d.

"No letter of any sort to correspond?" asked Figgis for the second time.

"No."

"I think for the present we will keep it," said he.

* * * * *

The little party at Mr. Taynton's was gay to the point of foolishness,
and of them all none was more light-hearted than the host. Morris had
asked him in an undertone, on arrival, whether any more had been heard,
and learning there was still no news, had dismissed the subject
altogether. The sunshine of the day, too, had come back to the lawyer;
his usual cheerful serenity was touched with a sort of sympathetic
boisterousness, at the huge spirits of the young couple and it was to be
recorded that after dinner they played musical chairs and blind-man's
buff, with infinite laughter. Never was an elderly solicitor so
spontaneously gay; indeed before long it was he who reinfected the others
with merriment. But as always, after abandonment to laughter a little
reaction followed, and when they went upstairs from his sitting-room
where they had been so uproarious, so that it might be made tidy again
before Sunday, and sat in the drawing-room overlooking the street, there
did come this little reaction. But it was already eleven, and soon Mrs.
Assheton rose to go.

The night was hot, and Morris was sitting to cool himself by the open
window, leaning his head out to catch the breeze. The street was very
empty and quiet, and his motor, in which as a great concession, his
mother had consented to be carried, on the promise of his going slow,
had already come for them. Then down at the seaward end of the street
he heard street-cries, as if some sudden news had come in that sent
the vendors of the evening papers out to reap a second harvest that
night. He could not, however, catch what it was, and they all went
downstairs together.

Madge was going home with them, for she was stopping over the Sunday with
Mrs. Assheton, and the two ladies had already got into the car, while
Morris was still standing on the pavement with his host.

Then suddenly a newsboy, with a sheaf of papers still hot from the press,
came running from the corner of the street just above them, and as he
ran he shouted out the news which was already making little groups of
people collect and gather in the streets.

Mr. Taynton turned quickly as the words became audible, seized a paper
from the boy, giving him the first coin that he found, and ran back into
the hall of his house,