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"Oh, come!" said Jasper, reproachfully. "Isn't that rather rude? But I must forgive you, and I do it easily, my dear Frank, when I remember that your sudden onslaught was prompted by a desire to champion Miss Stella! Now come, you owe me a rose, go and cut me one, and we will be friends--great friends, will we not?"

Frank slid from his grasp, but stood eying him suspiciously.

"You will not?" said Jasper. "Still uncertain lest it should have been sober earnest? Then I will cut one for myself. May I?" and he smiled at Stella.

Stella did not speak, but she inclined her head.

Jasper went to one of the standards and cut a red rose deliberately and carefully, and placed it in his coat, then he cut another, and with a smile held it to Stella.

"Will that do instead of the one the stupid boy has spoiled?" he said, laughing.

Stella would have liked to refuse it, but Frank's eyes were upon her.

Slowly she held out her hand and took the rose.

A smile of triumph glittered for a moment in Jasper's eyes, then he put his hand on Frank's shoulder.

"My dear Frank," he said, in a soft voice, "you must be careful; you must repress that impulsive temper of yours, must he not?" and he turned to Stella and held out his hand. "Good-bye! It is so dangerous, you know," he murmured, holding Stella's hand, but keeping his smiling eyes fixed on the boy's face. "Why, some of these days you will be doing someone an injury and find yourself in prison, doing as they call it, six months' hard labor, like a common thief--or forger!" and he laughed, as if it were the best joke in the world.

Not so Frank. As the bantering words left the thin, smiling lips, Frank recoiled suddenly, and his face went white.

Jasper looked at him.

"And now you are sorry?" he said. "Tell me it was only your fun! Why, my dear boy, you wear your heart on your sleeve! Well, if you would really like to beg my pardon, you may do it."

The boy turned his white face toward him.

"I--beg--your--pardon," he said, as if every word cost him an agony, and then, with a sudden twitch of the face, he turned and went slowly with bent head toward the house.

Jasper looked after him with a steely, cruel glitter in his eyes, and he laughed softly.

"Dear boy!" he murmured; "I have taken so fond a liking for him, and this only deepens it! He did it for your sake. You did not think I meant to keep the rose! No; I should have given it to you! But I may keep this! I will! to remind me of your promise that we may still be friends!"

And he let her hand go, and walked away.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Lord Leycester was on fire as he strode up the hill to the Hall, and that notwithstanding he was wet to the skin. He was on fire with love. He swore to himself, as he climbed up the slope, that there was no one like his Stella, no one so beautiful, so lovable and sweet as the dark-eyed girl who had stolen his heart from him that moonlight night in the lane.

And he also vowed that he would wait no longer for the inestimable treasure, the exquisite happiness that lay within his grasp.

His great wealth, his time honored title seemed as nothing to him compared with the thought of possessing the first real love of his life.

He smiled rather seriously as he pictured his father's anger, his mother's dismay and despair, and Lil's, dear Lilian's, grief; but it was a smile, though a serious one.

"They will get over it when it has once been done. After all, barring that she has no title and no money--neither of which are wanted, by the way--she is as delightful a daughter-in-law as any mother or father could wish for. Yes; I'll do it!"

But how? that was the question.

"There is no Gretna Green nowadays," he pondered, regretfully. "I wish there were! A ride to the border, with my darling by my side, nestling close to me all the way with mingled love and alarm, would be worth taking. A man can't very well put up the banns in any out-of-the-way place, because there are few out-of-the-way places where they haven't heard of us Wyndwards. By Jove!" he muttered, with a little start--"there is a special license. I was almost forgetting that! That comes of not being used to being married. A special license!" and pondering deeply he reached the house.

The party at the hall was very small indeed now, but Lady Lenore and Lord Charles still remained. Lenore had once or twice declared that she must go, but Lady Wyndward had entreated her to stay.

"Do not go, Lenore," she had said, with gentle significance. "You know--you must know that we count upon you."

She did not say for what purpose she counted upon her, but Lenore had understood, and had smiled with that faint, sweet smile which constituted one of her charms.

Lord Charles stayed because Leycester was still there.

"Of course I ought to go, Lady Wyndward," he said; "you must be heartily tired of me, but who is to play billiards with Leycester if I go, or who is to keep him in order, don't you see?" and so he had stayed, with one or two others who were only too glad to remain at the Hall out of the London dust and turmoil.

By all it was quite understood that Lord Leycester should be considered as quite a free agent, free to come and go as he chose, and never to be counted on; they were as surprised as they were gratified if he joined them in a drive or a walk, and were never astonished when he disappeared without furnishing any clew to his intentions.

Lady Wyndward bore it all very patiently; she knew that what Lady Longford had said was quite true, that it was useless to attempt to drive him; but she did say a word to the old countess.

"There is something amiss!" she said, with a sigh, and the old countess had smiled and shown her teeth.

"Of course there is, my dear Ethel," she retorted; "there always is where he is concerned. He is about some mischief, I am as convinced as you are. But it does not matter, it will come all right in time."

"But will it?" asked Lady Wyndward with a sigh.

"Yes, I think so," said the old countess, "and Lenore agrees with me, or she would not stay."

"It is very good of her to stay," said Lady Wyndward, with a sigh.

"Very!" assented the old lady, with a smile. "It is encouraging. I am sure she would not stay if she did not see excuse. Yes, Ethel it will all come right; he will marry Lenore, or rather, she will marry him, and they will settle down, and--I don't know whether you have asked me to stand god-mother to the first child."

Lady Wyndward tried to feel encouraged and confident, but she felt uneasy. She was surprised that Lenore still remained. She knew nothing of that meeting between the proud beauty and Jasper Adelstone.

And Lenore! A great change had come over her. She herself could scarcely understand it.

At night--as she sat before her glass while her maid brushed out the long tresses that fell over the white shoulders like a stream of liquid gold--she asked herself what it meant? Was it really true that she was in love with Lord Leycester? She had not been in love with him when she first came to the Hall--she would have smiled away the suggestion if anyone had made it; but now--how was it with her now? And as she asked herself the question, a crimson flush would stain the beautiful face, and the violet eyes would gleam with mingled shame and self-scorn, so that the maid would eye her wonderingly under respectfully lowered lids.

Yes, she was forced to admit that she did love him--love him with a passion which was a torture rather than a joy. She had not known the full extent of that passion until the hour when she had stood concealed between the trees at the river, and heard Leycester's voice murmuring words of love to another.

And that other! An unknown, miserable, painter's niece! Often, at night, when the great Hall was hushed and still, she lay tossing to and fro with miserable longing and intolerable shame, as she recalled that hour when she had been discovered by Jasper Adelstone and forced to become his confederate.

She, the great beauty--before whom princes had bent in homage--to be love-smitten by a man whose heart was given to another--she to be the confederate and accomplice of a scheming, under-bred lawyer.

It was intolerable, unbearable, but it was true--it was true; and in the very keenest paroxysm of her shame she would confess that she would do all that she had done, would conspire with even a baser one than Jasper Adelstone to gain her end.

"She!" she would murmur in the still watches of the night--"she to marry the man to whom I have given my love! It is impossible--it shall not be! Though I have to move heaven and earth, it shall not be."

And then, after a sleepless night, she would come down to breakfast--fair, and sweet, and smiling--a little pale, perhaps, but looking all the lovelier for such paleness, without the shadow of a care in the deep violet eyes.

Toward Leycester her bearing was simply perfection. She did not wish to alarm him; she knew that a hint of what she felt would put him on his guard, and she held herself in severe restraint.

Her manner to him was simply what it was to anyone else--exquisitely refined and charming. If anything, she adopted a lighter tone, and sought to and succeeded in calling forth his rare laughter.

She deceived him completely.

"Lenore in love with me!" he said to himself more than once; "the idea is ridiculous! What could have made the mother imagine such a thing?"

And so they met freely and frankly, and he talked and laughed with her at his ease, little dreaming that she was watching him as a cat watches a mouse, and that not a thing he said or did escaped her.

She knew by instinct where he spent the times in which he was missing from the Hall, and pictured to herself the meetings between him and the girl who had robbed her of his love. And as the jealousy increased, so did the love which created it. Day by day she realized still more fully that he had won her heart--that it was gone to him forever--that her whole future happiness depended upon him.

The very tone of his voice, so deep and musical--his rare laugh--the smile that made his face so gay and bright--yes, even the bursts of the passionate temper which lit up the dark eyes with sudden fire, were precious to her.

"Yes, I love him," she murmured to herself--"it is all summed up in that. I love him."

And Leycester, still smiling to himself over his mother's "amusing mistake," was all unsuspecting. All his thoughts were of Stella.

Now as he came toward the terrace, she stood with Lady Longford and Lord Charles looking down at him.

She watched him, her cheek resting on her white hand, her face hidden from the rest by the sunshade, whose lining of hearty blue harmonized with the golden hair, and "her heart hungered," as Victor Hugo says.

"Here's Leycester," said Lord Charles.

Lady Longford looked over the balustrade.

"What has he been doing? Rowing--fishing?"

"He went out with a fishing rod," said Lord Charles, with a grin, "but the fish appear to have devoured it; at any rate Leycester hasn't got it now. Hullo, old man, where have you been? Come up here!"

Leycester sprang up the steps and stood beside Lenore. It was the first time she had seen him that morning, and she inclined her head and held out her hand with a smile.

He took her hand; it was warm and soft, his own was still cold from his bath, and she opened her eyes widely.

"Your hand is quite cold," she said, then she touched his sleeve, "and you are wet. Where have you been?"

Leycester laughed carelessly.

"I have met with a slight accident, and gained a pleasant bath."

"An accident?" she repeated, not curiously, but with calm, serene interest.

"Yes," he said, shortly, "a young friend of mine fell into the river, and I joined company, just for company's sake."

"I understand," she said with a smile, "you went in to save him."

"Well, that's putting rather a fine point to it," he said, smilingly.

"But it's true. May one ask his name?"

Leycester flicked a piece of moss from the stone coping and hesitated for a moment:

"His name is Frank," he said; "Frank Etheridge."

Lady Lenore nodded.

"A pretty name; I don't remember it. I hope he is grateful."

"I hope so," said Leycester. "I am sure he is more grateful than the occasion merits."

The old countess looked round at him.

"What is it you say?" she said. "You have been in the river after some boy, and you stand there lounging about in your wet clothes? Well, the lad ought to be grateful, for though you will not catch your death, you will in all probability catch a chronic influenza cold, and that's worse than death; it's life with a pocket-handkerchief to your nose. Go and change your things at once."

"I think I had better, after that fearful prognostication," said Leycester, with a smile, and he sauntered off.

"Etheridge," said Lady Longford, "that is the name of that pretty girl with the dark eyes who dined here the other night."

"Yes," said Lenore, indifferently, for the old countess looked at her; she knew that the indifference was assumed.

"If Leycester doesn't take care, he will find himself in danger with those dark eyes. Girls are apt to be grateful toward men who rescue their cousins from a watery grave."

Lady Lenore shifted her sunshade and smiled serenely.

"No doubt she is very grateful. Why should she not be? Do you think Lord Leycester is in danger? I do not." And she strolled away.

The old lady glanced at Lord Charles.

"That is a wonderful girl, Charles," she said, with earnest admiration.

"What, Lenore?" he said. "Rather. Just found it out, Lady Longford?"

"No, Mr. Impertinence. I have known it all along; but she astonishes me afresh every day. What a great name she would have won on the stage. But she will do better as Lady Wyndward."

Lord Charles shook his head, and whistled softly.

"Rather premature that, isn't it?" he said. "Leycester doesn't seem very keen in that quarter, does he?"

Lady Longford smiled at him and showed her teeth.

"What does it matter how he seems?" she said. "It rests with her--with her. You are a nice boy, Charles, but you are not clever."

"Just exactly what my old schoolmaster used to say before he birched me," said Lord Charles.

"If you were clever, if you were anything else than unutterably stupid, you would go and see that Leycester changes his clothes," snapped the old lady. "I'll be bound he is sitting or lounging about in those wet things still!"

"A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse," said Lord Charles, laughing. "I'll go and do as I am bidden. He will probably tell me to go and mind my own business, but here goes," and he walked off toward the house.

He found Leycester in the hands of his valet, being rapidly transferred from wet flannels to orthodox morning attire, and apparently the valet was not having a particularly easy time of it.

Lord Charles sank into a chair, and watched the performance with amused interest.

"What's the matter Ley?" he asked, when the man left the room for a moment. "You'll drive that poor devil into a lunatic asylum."

"He's so confoundedly slow," answered Leycester, brushing away at his hair, which the valet had already arranged, and tugging at a refractory scarf. "I haven't a moment to lose."

"May one ask whence this haste?" said Lord Charles, with a smile.

Leycester colored slightly.

"I've half a mind to tell you, Charlie," he said, "but I can't. I'd better keep it to myself."

"I'm glad of it," retorted Lord Charles. "I'm sure it's some piece of madness, and if you told me, you'd want me to take a hand in it."

"But that's just it," said Leycester, with a laugh. "You've got to take a hand in it, old fellow."

"Oh!"

Leycester nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, with a musical laugh.

"The best of you, Charlie," he said, "is, that one can always rely on you."

Lord Charles groaned.

"Don't--don't, Ley!" he implored. "I know that phrase so well; you always were wont to use it when there was some particularly evil piece of business to be done in the old days. Frankly, I'm a reformed character, and I decline to aid and abet you in any further madness."

"This isn't madness," said Leycester;--"oh, keep outside a moment, Oliver, I don't want you;--this is not madness, Charlie; it's the sanest thing I've ever done in my life."

"I dare say."

"It is indeed. Look here! I am going up to London."

"I guessed that. Poor London!"

"Do stop and listen to me--I haven't a moment to spare. I want you to do a little delicate service for me."

"I decline. What is it?" retorts Lord Charles, inconsistently.

"It is very simple. I want you to deliver a note for me."

"Oh, come, you know! Won't one of the army of servants, who devour the land like locusts, serve your turn?"

"No; no none will do but yourself. I want this note delivered, at once. And I don't want anyone but our two selves to know anything about it; I don't want it to be carried about in one of the servant's pockets for an hour or two."

Lord Charles stretched his legs and shook his head.

"Look here, Ley, isn't this rather too 'thin?'" he remonstrated. "Of course it's to someone of the gentler sex!"

Leycester smiled.

"You are wrong," he said, with a smile. "Where's the Bradshaw, Oliver!" and he opened the door. "Put out the note-paper, and then tell them to get a dogcart to take me to the station."

"You will want me, my lord?"

"No, I am going alone. Look sharp!"

Oliver put out the writing materials and departed, and Leycester sat down and stared for a moment at the crested paper.

"Shall I go?" asked Lord Charles, ironically.

"No, I don't mean to lose sight of you, old fellow," replied Leycester. "Sit where you are."

"Can I help you? I am rather good at amorous epistles, especially other people's."

"Be quiet."

Then he seized the pen and wrote:--

"MY DEAR FRANK--I have inclosed a note for Stella. Will you give it to her when she is alone, and with your own hand! She will tell you that I have asked her to come with you by the eleven o'clock train to-morrow. Will you bring her to 24 Bruton Street? I shall meet you there instead of meeting you at the station. You see I put it quite simply, and am quite confident that you will help us. You know our secret, and will stand by us, will you not? Of course you will come without any luggage, and without letting anyone divine your intentions."

"Yours, my dear Frank,

"LEYCESTER."

This was all very well. It was easy enough to write to the boy, because he, Leycester, knew that if he had asked Frank to walk through fire, Frank would do it! But Stella?

A sharp pang of doubt assailed him as he took up the second sheet of paper. Suppose she should not come!

He got up and strode to and fro the room, his brows knit, the old look of determination on his face.

"Drop it, Ley," said Lord Charles, quietly.

Leycester stopped, and smiled down at him.

"You don't know what that would mean, Charlie," he said.

"Perhaps I do to--her, whomsoever it should be."

Then Leycester laughed outright.

"You are on the wrong track this time, altogether," he said, "quite wrong."

And he sat down and plunged into his letter.

Like the first, it was very short.

"MY DARLING,--Do not be frightened when you read what follows, and do not hesitate. Think, as you read, that our happiness depends upon your decision. I want you to come, with Frank, by the eleven o'clock train to London, whither I am going now. I want you to take a cab and go to 24 Bruton Street, where I shall be waiting for you. You know what will happen, my darling! Before the morrow you and I will have set out on that long journey through life, hand-in-hand, man and wife. My pen trembles as I write the words. You will come, Stella? Think! I know what you will feel--I know as if I were standing beside you, how you will tremble, and hesitate, and dread the step; but you must take it, dearest! Once we are married all will go well and pleasantly. I cannot wait any longer: why should I? I have written to Frank, and confided him to your care. Trust yourself to him, throw all your doubts and fears to the winds. Think only of my love, and, may I add, your own?"

"Yours ever,

"LEYCESTER."

He inclosed Stella's letter in a small envelope, and that, with Frank's letter, in a larger one, which he addressed to Frank.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"There," he said, balancing it on his finger and smiling, in his eager, impatient way--"there is the missive, Charlie. Read the superscription thereof."

Lord Charles took the letter gingerly, and shook his head.

"The lad you picked out of the water," he said. "What does it mean? I wish you'd drop it, Ley."

Leycester shook his head.

"This is the last time I shall ask you to do me a favor, Charlie----"

"Till the next."

"You mustn't refuse. I want you to give this to the boy. You will find him down at Etheridge's cottage. You cannot mistake him; he is a fair, delicate-looking boy, with yellow hair and blue eyes."

Lord Charles hesitated and looked up with a grave light in his eyes and a faint flush on his face.

"Ley," he said, in a low voice, "she is too good, far too good."

Lord Leycester's face flushed.

"If it were any other man, Charlie," he said, looking him full in the eyes, "I should cut up rough. I tell you that you misunderstand me--and you wrong me."

"Then," said Lord Charles, "it is almost a worse case. Ley, Ley, what are you going to do?"

"I am going to do what no man on earth could prevent me doing," said Leycester, calmly, but with a fierce light in his eyes. "Not even you, Charlie."

Lord Charles rose.

"Give me the letter," he said, quietly. "At any rate, I know when words are useless. Is there anything else? Shall I order a straight waistcoat? This, mark my words, Ley!--this--if it is what I conjecture it to be--this is the very maddest thing you have ever done!"

"It is the very wisest and sanest," responded Leycester. "No, there is nothing else, Charlie. I may wire for you to-morrow. If I do, you will come?"

"Yes, I will come," said Lord Charles.

Oliver knocked at the moment.

"The dogcart is waiting, my lord, and there is only just time."

Leycester and Lord Charles passed out and down the stairs.

The sound of laughter and music floated faintly through the parted curtains of the drawing-room.

"What shall I say to them?" asked Lord Charles, nodding toward the room.

Leycester smiled, grimly.

"Tell them," he said, "that I have gone to town _on business_," and he laughed quietly.

Then suddenly he stopped as if a thought had struck him, and glanced at his watch.

"One moment," he said, and ran lightly up the stairs to Lilian's room. Her maid met him at the door.

"Her ladyship is asleep," she said.

Leycester hesitated, then he signed to her to open the door, and entered.

Lady Lilian lay extended on her couch, her eyes closed, a faint, painful smile on her face.

He stood and looked at her a moment, then he bent and lightly touched her lips with his.

"Good-bye, Lil," he murmured. "You at least will understand."

Then he ran down, putting on his gloves, and had one foot on the dogcart step when Lady Wyndward came into the hall.

"Leycester," she said, "where are you going?"

He turned and looked at her rather wistfully. Lord Charles fingered the letter in his pocket, and wished himself in Peru.

"To London, mother," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

It was an unusual question for her, who rarely asked him his intentions, or the why and wherefore, and he hesitated.

"On business," he said.

She looked at the flushed face and the fire smoldering in his eyes, and then at Lord Charles, who jingled the money in his pocket, and whistled softly, with an air of pure abstraction.

"What is it?" she asked, and an unusual look of trouble and doubt came into her eyes.

"Nothing that need trouble you, mother," he said. "I shall be back--" he stopped; when should he be back?--"soon," he added.

Then he stooped and kissed her.

Lady Wyndward looked up into his eyes.

"Don't go, Leycester," she murmured.

Almost roughly, in his impatience, he put her arm from him.

"You don't know what you ask," he said. Then in a gentle tone he said "Good-bye," and sprang into the cart.

The horse rose for a moment, then put his fore feet down and went off like a rocket under the sharp cut of the whip, and Lady Wyndward, with a sigh of apprehension, turned to where Lord Charles had stood.

Had stood; for he had seized the moment of departure to steal off.

He had helped Leycester in many a mad freak, had stood in with him in many a wild adventure, which had cost them much after trouble and no small amount of money, but Lord Charles had a shrewd suspicion that this which he was asked to assist in was the climax of all that had gone before. But he felt that he must do it. As we have said, there were times when words were of as little use as chaff with Leycester, and this was one of them.

Ruefully, but unshaken in his devotion, he went up-stairs for his hat and stick, and sauntered down, still wishing that he could have been in Peru.

"There will be a terrible storm," he muttered. "His people will cut up rough, and I shall, of course, bear some portion of the blame; but I don't mind that! It is Ley I am thinking of! Will it turn out all right?"

He was asking himself the question dolefully and helplessly as he descended the stairs, when he became conscious of the graceful form of Lady Lenore standing in the hall and looking up at him.

She had watched Lord Leycester's departure from the window; she knew that he was going to town suddenly--knew that Lord Charles had been closeted with him, and now only needed to glance at Lord Charles' rueful face to be convinced that something had happened. But there was nothing of this in her smile as she looked up at him, gently fluttering a Japanese fan, and holding back the trailing skirts with her white, bejeweled fingers.

Lord Charles started as he saw her.

"By Jove!" he murmured, "if it is as I think, what will she do?" and with an instinctive dread he felt half inclined to turn and reascend the stairs, but Lenore was too quick for him.

"We have been looking for you, Lord Charles," she said, languidly. "Some rash individual has proposed lawn-tennis; we want you to play."

Lord Charles looked confused. The letter burnt his pocket, and he knew that he should know no peace until he got rid of it.

"Awfully sorry," he said; "going down to the post-office to post a letter."

Lady Lenore smiled, and glanced archly at the clock.

"No post till seven," she said; "won't it do after our game?"

"No post!" he said, with affected concern. "Better telegraph," he muttered.

"I'll get you a form!" she said, sweetly; "and you can send it by one of the pages."

"Eh?" he stammered, blushing like a school-boy. "No, don't trouble; couldn't think of it. After all it doesn't matter."

Then she knew that Leycester had given him some missive, and she watched him closely. No poorer hand at deception than poor Charles could possibly be imagined; he felt as if the softly-smiling velvet eyes could see into his pocket, and his hand closed over the letter with a movement that she noted instantly.

"It is a letter," she thought, "and it is for her."

And a pang of jealous fire ran through her, but she still looked up at him with a languid smile.

"Well, are you coming?"

"Of course," he assented, with too palpably-feigned alacrity. And he ran down the stairs.

She caught up a sun-hat and put it on, and pointed to the racquets that stood in their stand in the hall. She would not let him out of her sight for a moment.

"They are all waiting," she said.

He followed her on to the lawn. The group stood playing with the balls, and waiting impatiently.

Lord Charles looked round helplessly, but he had no time to think.

"Shall we play together?" said Lenore. "We know each other's play so well."

Lord Charles nodded, not too gallantly.

"All right," he said; and as he spoke, his hand wandered to his pocket.

The game commenced. They were well matched, and presently Lord Charles, whose two games were billiards and tennis, got interested. He also got warm, and taking off his coat, flung it on to the grass.

Lady Lenore glanced at it, and presently, as she changed places with him, took off her bracelet and threw it on the coat.

"Jewelery is superfluous in tennis," she said, with a soft laugh. "We mean to win this set, do we not, Lord Charles?"

He laughed.

"If you say so," he replied. "You always win if you mean it."

"Nearly always," she said, with a significant smile.

All the four were enthusiasts, if Lenore could be called enthusiastic about anything, and the game was hotly contested. The sun poured down upon their faces, but they played on, pausing occasionally for the usual squabble over the scoring; the servants brought claret and champagne cup; Lady Wyndward and the earl came out and sat in the shade, watching.

"We shall win!" exclaimed Lord Charles, the perspiration running down his face, his whole soul absorbed in the work, the letter entirely forgotten.

"I think so," said Lady Lenore, but as she spoke she missed a long ball.

"How did you manage that?" he inquired.

"It is the racquet," she said, apologetically. "It is a little too heavy. It always gets too heavy when I have been playing a little while. I wish I had my other one."

"I'll send for it," he said, eagerly.

"No, no," she said. "They won't know which it is--they never do."

"I'll go for it, then," he said, gracefully. "Can't lose the game, you know."

"Will you?" she said, eagerly. "It stands on the hall table----"

"I know," he said. "Wait a moment!" he called out to the others, and bolted off.

Lenore looked after him for a moment, then she glanced round. The other two were standing discussing the game; the on-lookers were gathered round the champagne cup. Lady Wyndward was lost in thought, with eyes bent to the ground.