“And so,” said Father O’Sullivan, blowing his nose, “I came right along to tell you, and ask you what is the next step to take.”  
“Poor chap!” ejaculated Tommy, delivering himself of a huge sigh. He was standing on the hearthrug, immaculately attired in dinner jacket, white shirt-front, and all the rest of the paraphernalia.
 
Muriel gave a little choke. She was sitting near him in a dress of her favourite pale green. Father O’Sullivan had descended on them both as they were waiting in the drawing-room for the announcement of dinner. It had, be it stated, already been made, but little heed had been paid thereto, and the butler in wrathful terms was now ordering the soup to be taken below again.
 
“And what are you both looking so glum about?” demanded Father O’Sullivan fiercely. “Faith, and weren’t you having me say Masses, and yourself setting up candles to St. Joseph, that that young Quixote—what’s-his-name—might hold up his head again? And now that the good Lord has answered our prayers and cleared him, and let that poor boy make a good confession and pass peacefully away, you’re looking as mournful as a mute at a funeral. Was it perhaps some other way you’d have been having God arrange things and not His way at all?” He stuffed his handkerchief back vigorously in his pocket as he spoke.
 
“But,” quoth Tommy in a slightly haughty fashion, feeling this speech somewhat of an aspersion on his wife’s wet eyes, “you will not, I imagine, deny that it was sad?”
 
“Sad! Of course it was sad, what happened first. But can’t you see the fine way, the beautiful way, God has taken away the sadness? You’re all for saying Paradise must be a grand place, but directly a soul gets a bit nearer to it you’re for weeping and wailing and crying ‘Poor fellow!’”
 
Muriel choked back her tears. Smiling at the old priest and the half-wrathful Tommy, she spoke.
 
“And you’re just as near crying yourself as I am, Father,” she protested. “And it’s that is making you so abominably rude and cross to us both.”
 
“Huh!” said Father O’Sullivan, and he coughed, putting up his hand to his mouth. And both cough and gesture hid that his lips were trembling.
 
“And now,” he requested after a moment, his voice steady and a trifle dry, “what’s to be done next?”
 
“Find Mr. Carden, of course,” announced Muriel with airy decision, as who should say that was a fact apparent to the most infantine intelligence.
 
“And it’s all very well to say ‘Find him,’” remarked Father O’Sullivan dryly, “but have you the faintest suspicion of a notion where he is at all?”
 
“Not the least,” quoth Muriel cheerfully; “that is exactly what we have to discover.”............