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“Shall I tell you?” he said.

“Oh, do.”

“Because I’m—I’m already in love with somebody else.”

“Oh, Virgil, how exciting. Who is it?”

Pardoner swallowed.

“It isn’t exciting at all,” he said aggrievedly. “It’s very tragic. Here have I been waiting and waiting for old James Tantamount to pass to a well-earned rest, and now he’s done it—and fairly cramped my style.”

“But who is it, Virgil?”

“You wouldn’t know her,” protested Pardoner.

“Tell me her name.”

“Townshend. June Townshend. One of the Lincolnshire lot.”

Sarah knitted her brows.

“June Townshend,” she said musingly. “I never heard of her. Does she——”

“I told you you hadn’t,” said Pardoner. “But that’s neither here nor there. There’s my skeleton or cross, or whatever you like to dress it in. You see, my lady, we’re both in the same sad boat. You want George, and I want June. And we can’t have ’em.”

Sarah stretched out her hand.

“Let me look at the Will,” she said.

Pardoner produced and handed her a paper.

.... subject to the aforesaid legacies give devise and bequeath all my real and personal property of every sort and description as follows to be divided equally between my nephew Virgil Pardoner of 79 St. James’s Street, S.W. and my ward Sarah Cust Vulliamy at present of Palfrey in the New Forest upon the absolute condition that my aforesaid nephew and ward are married the one to the other within three months of my death. But should my aforesaid nephew and ward or either of them fail to observe this condition or dispute this Will then I devise and bequeath the whole of my aforesaid property equally to the undermentioned Institutions....