The Incredulity of Father Brown
absently, "may the young man from Australia be?"
"Ah!" snorted the doctor, "hasn't your friend told you about him? As a matter of fact I believe he is arriving today. Quite a romance in the old style of melodrama: the heir back from the colonies to his ruined castle, all complete even down to an old family compact for his marrying the lady watching in the ivied tower. Queer old stuff, isn't it? but it really happens sometimes. He's even got a little money, which is the only bright spot there ever was in this business."
"What does Miss Darnaway herself, in her ivied tower, think of the business?" asked Martin Wood dryly.
"What she thinks of everything else by this time," replied the doctor. "They don't think in this weedy old den of superstitions, they only dream and drift. I think she accepts the family contract and the colonial husband as part of the Doom of the Darnaways, don't you know. I really think that if he turned out to be a humpbacked Negro with one eye and a homicidal mania, she would only think it added a finishing touch and fitted in with the twilight scenery."
"You're not giving my friend from London a very lively picture of my friends in the country," said Wood, laughing. "I had intended taking him there to call; no artist ought to miss those Darnaway
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