And proceeded with his critical and explanatory comments on the Vision of Cleopatra.

He was capable of becoming almost delirious about music.  Mary Morfe had seated herself in silence.

At last Eva and Mr Morfe approached the fire and the mantelpiece again.  Mr Morfe shut up the score, dismissed his delirium, and looked at the clock, quite prepared to see it pointing to twenty-nine and a half minutes past nine.  Instead, the clock pointed to only twenty-two minutes past nine.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed.  He went nearer.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed again rather more loudly.  “I do believe that clock’s stopped!”

It had.  The pendulum hung perpendicular, motionless, dead.

He was astounded.  For the clock had never been known to stop.  It was a presentation clock, of the highest guaranteed quality, offered to him as a small token of regard and esteem by the members of the Bursley Orpheus Glee and Madrigal Club to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of his felicitous connection with the said society.  It had stood on his mantelpiece for four years and had earned an absolutely first-class reputation for itself.  He wound it up on the last day of every month, for it was a thirty-odd day clock, specially made by a famous local expert; and he had not known it to vary more than ten minutes a month at the most.  And lo! it had stopped in the very middle of the month.

“Did you wind it up last time?” asked Mary.

“Of course,” he snapped.  He had taken out his watch and was gazing at it.  He turned to Eva.  “It’s twenty to ten,” he said.  “You’ve missed your connection at Turnhill—­that’s a certainty.  I’m very sorry.”

Obviously there was only one course open to a gallant man whose clock was to blame:  namely, to accompany Eva Harracles to Turnhill by car, to accompany her on foot to Silverhays, then to walk back to Turnhill and come home again by car.  A young woman could not be expected to perform that bleak and perhaps dangerous journey from Turnhill to Silverhays alone after ten o’clock at night in November.  Such was the clear course.  But he dared scarcely suggest it.  He dared scarcely suggest it because of his sister.  He was afraid of Mary.  The names of Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles had already been coupled in the mouth of gossip.  And naturally Eva Harracles herself could not suggest that Richard should sally out and leave his sister alone on this night specially devoted to sisterliness and brotherliness.  And of course, Eva thought, Mary will never, never suggest it.

But Eva was wrong there.

To the amazement of both Richard and Eva, Mary calmly said: 

“Well, Dick, the least you can do now is to see Miss Harracles home.  You’ll easily be able to catch the last car back from Turnhill if you start at once.  I daresay I shall go to bed.”

And in three minutes Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles were being sped into the night by Mary Morfe.