"I kept staring at it all the time; I had a sort of feeling--I swear I had a sort of feeling! If I'd only been sure I'd have whistled." "Whistled! At one in the morning! What would have been the good of that?" "Suppose, say, I'd whistled 'The Devout Lover'--or what I should have meant for 'The Devout Lover'--you'd have heard." "I probably should have heard; Miss Claughton would probably have heard also." "Oh, hang Miss Claughton!" "Rodney! Miss Claughton's a dear--and your hostess!" "Miss Claughton may be an absolute angel for all I know--you know what I mean--so long as you heard I shouldn't have cared who heard. Then you'd have wondered who was kicking up that awful row." "Do you think I should?" "Certain! I can't whistle for nuts. Then you'd have got out of bed, crossed the room with your dear little bare feet----" "Rodney!" "And lifted the corner of the blind." "I might." "When you'd seen me hanging on to the railings for all I was worth, trying to get my breath and whistle at the same time; you'd have stopped crying, whatever else you did." "Rodney, how absurd you are! Fancy your hanging on to the railings for all you were worth! What did you really do?" "Oh, I hung about and hung about, and then I slunk off home. Wasn't it silly to come and see you at that time of night? I knew you'd laugh!" "If I'd known you were there I shouldn't have cried. The idea, you darling! But, Rodney, why didn't you manage to get a peep at me the whole of yesterday?" "Do you think I didn't try?--but I couldn't; it was a day of horrors! Just as I was wondering if I couldn't manage to get at least a kiss by making out that Kensington was on the way to the City, the news came of what my uncle had done. That was a facer, for a man to get news like that just as he was finishing his breakfast." "But I thought you didn't get the news till you reached the City? You sent your first telegram from there." "I got the news before, but I didn't understand; I didn't want to understand, I didn't dare to understand. Then I had to go to the inquest." "Did you? It doesn't say anything in the paper about you being there." "Of course not; my evidence wasn't wanted after all, but we all of us had to be there. It was awful!" "You poor, poor boy! Afterwards why didn't you come straight to me?" "I couldn't; I had to rush off to the City." "But why?" "Everything was in the most frightful confusion; no one knew why he had done it." "But there was the verdict!" "The verdict? My uncle was not a man to kill himself for a shadow; there might be a better reason. Say nothing to your father; I wish to impute nothing against my uncle's credit; but at one time it seemed just possible that he had done it, because he knew he was ruined, to save himself from shame, dishonour. We had to find out, to be certain, to make sure; we went all through the books; we went through everything; we were at it till the small hours of the morning."