This correspondence clouded his last evening at Greystone.  He was glad that some acquaintances of Morton’s came, and stayed late; sitting alone with his friend, he would have been tempted to talk of Alma, and he felt that silence was better just now.

By a train soon after breakfast next morning, he left the old town, dearer to him each time that he beheld it, and travelled slowly to the main-line junction, whence again he travelled slowly to Peterborough.  There the express caught him up, and flung him into roaring London again.  Before going to Pinner, he wished to see Cecil Morphew, for he had an idea to communicate —­ a suggestion for the extending of business by opening correspondence with out of the way towns, such as Greystone.

On reaching the shop in Westminster Bridge Road, he found that Morphew also had a communication to make, and of a more exciting nature.

CHAPTER 3

Morphew was engaged upstairs with the secretary of an Amateur Photographic Society.  Waiting for this person’s departure, Rolfe talked with the shopman —­ a capable fellow, aged about thirty, whose heart was in the business; he looked at a new hand-camera, which seemed likely to have a good sale, and heard encouraging reports of things in general.  Then Morphew came down, escorting his visitor.  As soon as he was free, he grasped Harvey by the arm, and whispered eagerly that he had something to tell him.  They went upstairs together, into a room furnished as an office, hung about with many framed photographs.

‘He’s dead!’ exclaimed Cecil —­ ‘he’s dead!’

A name was needless.  Only one man’s death could be the cause of such excitement in Morphew, and it had been so long awaited that the event had no touch of solemnity.  Yet Harvey perceived that his friend’s exultation was not unmixed with disquietude.

’Yesterday morning, early.  I heard it by chance.  Of course, she hasn’t written to me, but no doubt I shall hear in a few days.  I walked about near the house for hours last night —­ like an idiot.  The thing seemed impossible; I had to keep reminding myself, by looking at the windows, that it was true.  Eight years —­ think of that!  Eight years’ misery, due to that fellow’s snobbishness!’

In Harvey’s mind the story had a somewhat different aspect.  He knew nothing personally of this Mr. Winter, who might indeed be an incarnation of snobbery; on the other hand, Cecil Morphew had his defects, and even to a liberal-minded parent might not recommend himself as a son-in-law.  Then again, the young lady herself, now about six and twenty, must surely have been influenced by some other motive than respect for her parents’ wishes, in thus protracting her engagement with a lover who had a secure, though modest, income.  Was it not conceivable that she inherited something of the paternal spirit? or, at all events, that her feelings had not quite the warmth that Morphew imagined?