How charming, too, was the girl Madge Templeton, whom he had met, not for the first time, that evening.
He himself had guessed how things stood between the two before Morris had confided in him, and it pleased him that his intuition was confirmed.
What a pity, however, that the two were not going to meet next day, that she was out with her mother and would not get back till late.

It would have been a cooling thought in the hot office hours of to-morrow to picture them sitting together in the garden at Falmer, or under one of the cool deep-foliaged oaks in the park.
Then suddenly his face changed, the smile faded, but came back next instant and broadened with a laugh.

And the man who laughs when he is by himself may certainly be supposed to have strong cause for amusement.
Mr.Taynton had come by this time to the West Pier, and a hundred yards farther would bring him to Montpellier Road.

But it was yet early, as he saw (so bright was the moonlight) when he consulted his watch, and he retraced his steps some fifty yards, and eventually rang at the door of a big house of flats facing the sea, where his partner, who for the most part, looked after the London branch of their business, had his _pied-a-terre_.

For the firm of Taynton and Mills was one of those respectable and solid businesses that, beginning in the country, had eventually been extended to town, and so far from its having its headquarters in town and its branch in Brighton, had its headquarters here and its branch in the metropolis.