The bridegroom pushed through the groups into the narrow passage, so possessed by his purpose as to be unaware of the curiosity and excitement about him. He merely halted a second to fling out an order to his groom, then hurried on again, and, at the office, peremptorily demanded a room.

The young person with the wonderful ringlets, who at that moment there presided, was much too interested in the mad, bad lord to depute to anyone the task of showing him the apartment. On the threshold of the room allotted to him, without even casting a glance upon its merits, he paused:

'Will you kindly tell the lady-the Countess what's her name, Countess Mordante something-who is staying here that I will present myself in her sitting-room immediately. I, Lord Wroth, you understand, wish to call upon the lady. Oh, never stare like that, woman! Go at once, do you hear? Yes, yes, the room will do. Take my message.'

'But, my lord-'

She'll drive me crazy! Here, girl, will this help you to understand?' He fumbled furiously in his pocket, then thrust a gold piece into her hand. She stared at it, and then at him; then held out the guinea again, and with an agreeable smile :

'But the lady's gone, my lord!' she said, mincing.

Wroth, who had moved to enter his room, turned suddenly back with a leap.

'Gone?'

'Yes, indeed, my lord, quite an hour ago. Mr. Tunstall had a deal of trouble to get horses for her chaise-so many gentlemen had been ordering horses, your lordship will understand. But she was very insistent, very insistent indeed, and did not mind the expense-so she said. She must go, at once, said she.'

The girl gazed into the blasted face with a thrill of the deepest enjoyment. Pray, my lord, allow me to return this money.

I really could not-'

But her genteel protest was lost in space. He had thrust her from his path. Not roughly-no, indeed, she was subsequently wont to relate that he took her by the shoulders as he would a child. She heard him clattering down the turning stairs, heard his voice uplifted in outcry for the landlord, before she recovered from her astonishment. She ran to the landing and leaned over the banister, all eagerness.

Mr. Tunstall's answer rang in tones of sullenness unprecedented

in his dealings with customers of quality. The grand foreign lady had taken sudden departure; and Mrs. Tunstall averred that it was all due to my lord's intrusion upon her she had foreseen itshe had even warned his lordship! Now, they had lost the best guest of the season, and Mr. Tunstall's dudgeon was as apparent as he well dared to display it.

'I could hardly take upon myself to say for certain, my lord, but I gathered from the Countess's courier that they were for Dover.'

'Dover.'

That single word was in Wroth's voice.

'Aye, my lord—going on to the Continent. First stop Maidstone.'

'Maidstone

Without further parley Wroth called for his reckoning, for fresh horses to his curricle. Here there ensued a sudden wrangle. There were no horses, none to be had in the town to-night, for love or money. It had been as much as they could do to find them for the Countess. The last pair had been taken by his lordship's gentlemen friends back to the Abbey. Their own greys Mr. Martindale and the lady-here the landlord coughed and stammered

'Then let my chestnuts be put to again. A pint of wine each to their oats.'

Mr. Tunstall, who was a lover of horseflesh, protested, deeply reproachful. It was murder to take the beauties out of the stables again to-night. They'd been driven cruel. He'd not be a man if he did not say so. Now, to-morrow morning

'Where do you put up at Maidstone ? '

'The Swan, my lord, but

The young imperative voice flung out the fiat : 'They shall take me to Maidstone to-night.'

One of the chestnuts went dead lame before they had left the Wells three miles behind-and an hour was lost in getting as far as Kipping Cross. Leaving the groom in charge of the suffering beast and the curricle at the village pot-house, with orders to return on the morrow to the Abbey, Wroth started off alone, riding the other horse, bare back, with a makeshift of curtailed reins.

It was a gloomy night, and the mists had increased; dank, clammy, they soaked a man to the skin in imperceptible moisture. He missed his way more than once on the solitary roads ever

branching into unknown directions, and it was nearly midnight when he reached Maidstone. There it required all his masterfulness to arouse the folk at the Swan Inn; and a fantastic sum of money to obtain a saddle-horse in exchange for his own, on which to continue the journey forthwith the travelling party with the foreign courier had halted for supper, he heard, but had posted on for Dover, by Canterbury.

At Key Street, at Faversham, at Canterbury, through the remainder of the night, the experience and the proceedings were much the same. But determination backed by a well-filled purse will carry any traveller on, even through these dead hours when the passing guest is resented rather than welcomed by the most grasping host. As the dawn whitened to the left, Wroth began to taste the salt air on his lips. His road was now climbing the inland slope of those white cliffs which gave Albion her name. Soon the land broke and fell away before him, under the lour of the sky spread the sullen swell of the sea.

His last mount was a heavy clumping brute which neither hand nor heel could urge beyond a sullen trot. By the time he had left the downs behind him, and jogged as far as the outskirts of Dover, a raw wind had sprung up and cleared the fog; and it was broad day. The clouds hung low, threatening, trailing off seaward, dipping jagged edges here and there. The church clock was striking eight when he dismounted at the door of the Royal. The packet, sir?' cried the waiter, looking with a blank, uninterested eye from the mud-stained rider to his reeking steed. Why, she's gone this half-hour. Ebb-tide at seven, sir.'

6

Imperiously, Wroth darted his questions.

Aye, the waiter replied, between smothered yawns-there had been a lady and her maid, and a jabbering fellow of a foreigner. Breakfast they had had, then off with them. And a bit of tossing they were now enjoying, there was not a doubt of that.

It was in the dingy coffee-room, and the man pointed with a flip of his professional napkin towards the window. Wroth stepped into the bow, and looked out on the restless grey of the channel beyond the pier. Livid white, the sails of the retreating packet were painted against the gloom of sea and sky-no larger than gulls' wings. The wind was fair for France; she was making good speed.

He stared forth on the dismal picture a long while in silence. The waiter coughed, moved a chair, flicked crumbs from the table.

Luggageless, unimportant as the traveller seemed, his eye commanded respect, his voice obtained obedience.

'Breakfast, sir?' insinuated the man at last.

Wroth wheeled round, drew a pocket-book from his breast, ran a finger through the rustle of what remained of Mr. Minchin's notes, and glanced again seaward. His lips moved silently as if in calculation. Then he closed the leather case again, thrust it into his pocket, and with an air of sudden decision :

'Aye, breakfast!' he cried. And order a post chaise--for London. And mind you, fellow, I like my coffee served hot, and my horses quick.'

The waiter withdrew, deeply impressed with the glimpse of wealth he had seen between the strange gentleman's fingers, while Wroth let himself fall into a chair, with a dumb curse on his limited funds. A paltry couple of hundred. It was no use. With only a couple of hundred more he might have chartered a light vessel for himself, started in chase of the gull's wings, caught Juliana, if not on Calais pier itself, at least before she'd left the town. But now he must back to London. He would overtake her in time; no fear about that, but first of all he must have unlimited funds. Is the landlord about?' he asked, when the waiter returned with the steaming tray. Then ask him to be good enough to speak to me for a moment. Say it is Lord Wroth, of Hurley Abbey.'

Yes?

And when the host, with all alacrity, had presented himself: 'When will the packet leave, the day after to-morrow?' asked his noble guest.

'Wind permitting, at the turn of the tide, my lord. That is half-past nine, my lord-God willing.'

'I shall be back,' said Wroth; to-morrow night you will kindly retain room for a carriage on board-in my name-and passage for me and my servant. And stay To whom must one apply for leave to use the Admiralty telegraph for private messages?'

"The harbour-master, my lord.'

Wroth scribbled a note and sent it forth with his compliments. 'Put the amount down in my bill,' he added affably; ‘but do me the favour to see that it is transmitted as early as possible.' Then he applied himself to his much-needed repast.

Not one jot was his purpose altered by this check; only his fevered heat had left him. He was set into steadiness, and his

brain active in forming practical plans. He was not cast down, his will was too firmly made up for that. It was perhaps even as well, he thought to himself, that this mad chase should be interrupted; she could not now escape him, he knew her name, he knew her home.

An hour later he started on his backward journey. The great arms of the semaphore along the Dover road were waving an imperative despatch to Mr. Minchin in the city; an express courier was galloping with a letter to Sebastien Picard, his French valet, at Hurley Abbey, ordering that worthy to come and await his master's pleasure at 'The Royal,' Dover, and to bring the travelling curricle with him, everything ready for a foreign tour, within thirty-six hours. A kind of placidity was upon him as he lay back in the coach. Suspense was, so far, over, in that his course was now clearly defined, and that the next few days could only hold the uneventful details of preparation and pursuit. After rehearsing his schemes in his mind, he set himself very deliberately to sleep. And sleep he did with but the intervals for meals and change of horses, for most of the hours that took him from the coast to London Bridge.

The athlete's body is his trained servant, and it will respond to the emergency. Wroth's night in the saddle; his previous night of mingled conviviality and lonely vigil; all the storms of passion that had shaken him these thirty-six hours; his agony of selfcontempt; his corrosive bitterness; the shock of recognition, mingled joy and torture; his thwarted tenderness and the struggle between good and evil in murderous rage; the recurrent disappointments of the chase-a stronger frame than his might have been broken by it all! But as the birds have, for that effort which keeps them poised in prolonged flight, a strength of heart not vouchsafed to creatures bound to earth, so this man, despite his reckless tempers and wasted youth, had that something which marked him rare amongst his kind; that strength which in the artist makes the genius in the man of action the conqueror; which was to make of him the lover.

The sun was setting in a crimson sky of good weather promise, and generously tinging the waters of old Thames, when he alighted from the coach on the Southwark side of London Bridge. Glad to stretch his limbs after seven hours of steady posting, he crossed over and made his way rapidly towards Bishopsgate.