coming! You will meet me at the station at Benstead by the eleven train?"

She raised her head and looked at him steadily; she was holding her breath; but at last she said in a low voice: "Yes, I will meet you."

CHAPTER IX.

STRANGELY enough, Kyra slept soundly that night, after she had once got to sleep. She lay awake for a little while, thinking of the ordeal of the morrow, planning how she could get away for so many hours; she thought also of the generous young fellow who had consented to the marriage and had so simply arranged it; but there was nothing warmer than gratitude in her thoughts of him. If she had loved him in the very least, she would not have fallen to sleep so easily-she would have lain awake thrilling with the manifold anticipations of the future that was opening upon her.

When she came down to breakfast she wore a black, tailormade suit which might have been worn by a governess or one of the female clerks who now fill the post- and public-offices, to the exclusion of the men-who, it is to be presumed, will ultimately be driven to taking in washing or going into domestic service as "generals" or plain cooks-and, in response to Mrs. Froyte's questioning glance, said:

"I am going for a long walk over the downs, this morning."

Stracey entered the room as she spoke, pausing at the door to fling the end of his cigarette into a vase in the hall-he was one of those men who smoke cigarettes while they are dressing, and on every possible and almost impossible occasion -and looked at her, with his soft smile.

"I was going to propose a ride, Kyra," he said.

"Yes; it would be very nice," she said, with a calmness and composure which astonished herself; "but I would rather walk this morning."

"So be it," he said, promptly. "And we will start early

-shall we?"

Her heart beat fast with resentment rather than with nerv

ousness.

"Yes," she assented; "it would be a pity to waste so fine a morning.'

"I'm not so sure that it is going to continue fine," remarked James Froyte, looking up from his plate and then

swiftly down again. "There are some clouds over the Head"

"My father is always pessimistic, you know," said Stracey, with the suggestion of a sneer with which he nearly always met any remark of his father's. "We'll trust our luck, Kyra, eh?" he added, in a tone of affectionate familiarity that made Kyra's resentment burn hotly; but she smiled an assent, and the breakfast proceeded in the usual silence, the two men engrossed with their newspapers, and Mrs. Froyte gazing fixedly at her plate.

"Just give me time to answer a letter or two, and I'll be ready to join you, Kyra." said Stracey.

"Please do not hurry," she responded, casually and indifferently; but, as the door of the smoking-room closed behind him, she went up to her room, and, hurriedly putting on her hat and jacket, came down again.

"Will you tell Stracey that I will go for a little stroll while he is writing? I will come back for him; but, if I do not, ask him to come after me. I will go towards the glen."

Mrs. Froyte inclined her head.

"Perhaps he would go with you now-" she began, hesitatingly; but Kyra said, quickly:

"Oh, please, don't disturb him; it will not matter." And, forcing herself to linger, left the house by the end of the terrace which the smoking-room window did not overlook. She walked slowly through the garden, and went in the direction. she should take if she were making the glen her destination; but, when the rising ground shut her from the view of anyone in the house, she turned and went towards the station, rapidly forecasting the trend of events: Stracey would wait, say, half or three-quarters of an hour for her. He would sit and smoke and lounge over the newspaper, and would not put on his boots and hat until he had decided that she was not coming. Then he would start to follow her and certainly would go as far as the glen before he turned back, under the impression that he had missed her. All this would take another hour and a half; and long before that she would be at Benstead.

She reached the station and was not disappointed at not seeing Lance le Breton there; indeed, she was rather relieved; for there would be a certain amount of danger if they were seen travelling by the same train.

There were several passengers on the station, but there was no one she knew; and neither the booking-clerk nor the por ters recognised her, for, since she had arrived, late at night, at Holmby, she had not been to the station. She took a

third-class return-ticket, and, as the train pulled up at the platform, got quickly, but with no appearance of hurry, into an empty carriage.

Several of the other passengers followed her, but she turned her face to the window as if to look at the view, and she had drawn her veil-rather a thick one for the summer-almost completely over her face. Her fellow-travellers were farmers and farm-labourers going to Benstead market, and, beyond an indifferent glance at her, displayed no interest in the quiet girl in the black dress.

When the train stopped at Benstead-it was the next station to Holmby-Kyra waited until the other passengers had alighted, and then went quickly from the carriage and down the wooden stairs into the road beneath.

Her heart leapt-with satisfaction, not with love-at the sight of the tall figure, with the straight, flat shoulders, which was standing by the arch-way, and she was crossing to him at once; but he made a slight, warning gesture with his hand, indicating that she was to remain on her side of the road, and he set off slowly for the town.

It was not until they reached the High Street, crowded by market-people, that he crossed and joined her.

"I tho ght it better that we should not meet, so evidently by appointment, close to the station, where we should be noticed, but here in the midst of the crowd," he said.

He had not held out his hand, but only raised his hat; and the hand she had ready for him fell to its place at her side. She nodded and looked at him comprehendingly.

"Yes; I understand. It was very wise, thoughtful-” "Are you quite well?" he broke in: he seemed in a state of suppressed excitement; his handsome, almost boyish face was flushed one moment and pale the next; his frank eyes were glowing one instant, the next grave and overcast. "Did you have any difficulty in-getting away? I have been imagining all sorts of things-imagining only, for I know nothing-you have told me nothing."

She look up at him swiftly.

"No: I-cannot: and you promised not to ask?" she said, in a low voice.

"I know-I know! I'm not asking!" he returned, promptly. "But I can't tell you how anxious I have been while I have been waiting. I came over by the early train. I was here yesterday evening and hunted up a church. It is St. Jude's. An old-fashioned place in a poor part of the town. I saw the verger-what do you call him?-this morning, and

gave him notice. There are no end of marriages there generally-every day, I mean; but there are none to-day, and no other service. There isn't likely to be anybody in the church: it's market-day, and everybody will be too busy for sauntering in."

"You have thought of everything," she said, in a voice whose sweetness thrilled him. "You seem to have forgotten nothing: ah, that is the best of being a man!"

She sighed and looked before her with preoccupied eyes as they threaded their way through the crowd. Just before them was walking a young farmer and a girl, probably engaged; the young man, taking advantage of the throng, slipped his arm round the girl's waist, and, for a moment, pressed her to his side. Lance saw the little pantomime, the swift, irrepressible embrace, and glanced, with a thrill of sympathy, at the beautiful face beside him. But Kyra had not seen or had been too absorbed to notice the two sweethearts and the young man's action, and Lance's swift, appealing glance fell back as if from a polished shield.

"It is a narrow street at the bottom of this one," he said, in a subdued voice. "I thought it best to walk-there are no cabs here, of course, and a fly from one of the hotels—" She made a gesture of comprehension and assent.

"Much better," she said. "No one will notice us in this crowd; and everyone seems so busy, so taken up with his own affairs. Ah, this is quieter," she added, as they turned into the less frequented street. "There is so much I want to say," she went on, after a pause. "But I seem so confused, so bewildered, that I cannot arrange my thoughts."

"

Lance glanced at her with some surprise: she appeared to him so calm and self-possessed, to even a marvellous extent, seeing that he was conscious of a wild and tumultuous beating of the heart and a swift surging of the blood in every vein.

"You will be able to tell me after the-the ceremony," he said, a little hurriedly; "there is no time now; we are a few minutes late as it is. Here is the church."

She looked up at it in a dazed kind of fashion.

"It is very old," she murmured, mechanically, "and very dilapidated. I hope no one will be there!"

"Wait one moment; I will see," he said, and he went in.

She stood on the threshold and gazed vacantly at a catprobably in search of the proverbial church mouse-who stared back at her in a dazed way-and he came out again almost instantly.

"There is no one there excepting the verger and pew

opener the clergyman has not arrived yet: they say he is always late-"

66

Oh, if he should have forgotten!" Kyra exclaimed, under her breath.

Lance's heart leapt, but sank again as he noted the total absence of any sentiment except fear in her tone.

"Oh, he won't forget: here he comes, I suppose," he said, as a clergyman, bent double with age, came up the steps peering at them with lack-luster, incurious eyes.

Kyra drew a breath of relief, and the two passed into the church. As they did so, the sky, which had been clouding over, became very heavy, and they heard the distant roll of thunder.

"There is going to be a storm: we are in shelter just in time," said Lance, trying to speak lightly, but conscious of the tremor in his voice.

The pew-opener-the typical pew opener with an obvious "front," in colour and texture as unlike human hair as it could possibly be-came waddling towards them.

"Good-morning, miss; good-morning, sir! Air you the couple as is going to be-"

"Yes, yes," said Lance, impatiently. "Is it all ready? We're in a hurry-I mean, we don't want to wait!"

"Yes, sir. And quite natural it is, to be sure! I'll go and see if Mr. Jackson's got his surplus on.

"It's quite dark," said Lance to Kyra, in the whisper in which we are accustomed to pitch our voices in a sacred edifice.

As he spoke, the verger hobbled up, looking, in his musty gown, as if he had spent the whole of his long existence in it, and had never left the gloomy, grimy building.

66

P'r'aps you'd like to have the lamps lighted-them near the altar, at any rate, sir?" he suggested, in a wheezy voice. "It's what you might call depressing for a weddin'."

Lance glanced questioningly at Kyra, but she shook her head, and he said, hurriedly:

"No, no!"

The bent figure of the old clergyman, in a dingy surplice, toiled slowly from the vestry with a book in his hand, and the verger signed to Lance to follow with Kyra.

Instinctively he held out his arm for her hand, and he felt it tremble as it rested, light as a fluttering bird, on his sleeve. They stood before the altar; the clergyman began the service as if he were an automaton, set in motion and moved to speech by some mysterious agency; and in a state of dull