"Shut up, you ass," replied Edwy in the same commonplace accents. "Maiden," he continued in a bass that was now truly diabolic, "the ladder of knotted sheets for thy fell purpose awaitest thee."
"A terribly appropriate adjective," Jasmine observed with a smile. "I'm not really to climb up that, am I?"
"No," said Edwy reluctantly. "An thou wilt, thou cannest enter by the door."
"Poor Edward!" murmured Jasmine. "How he must be hating this!"
"Foolish maiden," Edwy reproached her. "It is not Edward who you seekest, but one more near, no, I mean more dear, but one more dear to thee. My trusty followers and me will watch without whilst thou speaketh with him."
The air of Bartelmytide was moist and chill, and Jasmine, with regretful thoughts of the Deanery fires which had just begun, hurried into the tower to finish off her part of the performance. She was not to be let off until she had mounted to the upper room, and though in the darkness the ladder felt more than usually wobbly and the stones on either side more than usually covered with cobwebs, she went boldly on, and had no sooner reached the upper room than she was aware that there was somebody there, somebody who did not greet her with the flash of a dark lantern, but with the flicker of a cigar-lighter.
"Well, this is a rum way to meet you again," Harry Vibart exclaimed genially.
"But...." Jasmine stammered, "I thought I told you not to come down here."
Vibart was too tactful to say that he had supposed the forbidding postscript was at least a suggestion if not an invitation that he should come down, and looking as suitably penitent as he could by the wavering beams of the cigar-lighter, he explained that he had only done so with great caution, and added a hope that she would forgive him.
"Yes, but supposing my uncle and aunt find out that you have arranged to meet me like this?"
"Oh, I didn't arrange to meet you like this," Vibart explained. "Those three young sportsmen downstairs arranged that. The only thing I did was to make enquiries beforehand where you were living, and somehow they got it into their heads--of course you'll think it ridiculous, I know--but ... well, to put it shortly, they imagined ... that I was ... rather keen on you."