"Dress! You needn't dress! They're homely folk at Kensington, and Stella will excuse you; she won't want you to waste, in dressing, valuable time which might be spent with her. You come straight on from the office in your toil-stained garments. She'll want to know what time. Shall I say five? I dare say, at a pinch, you can manage to be in Kensington by five." Rodney considered. If he did go straight on from the office he would at least escape the risk of another heated discussion with Miss Joyce--that would be something. "Very well, sir; if Stella will forgive me coming as I am, as you say, all toil-stained, I'll try my best to be with her as near as possible to five." CHAPTER XVII THE ACTING HEAD OF THE FIRM Mr. Austin and Rodney left the house together, and so disappointed Miss Joyce, who was waiting to have one or two last words with Mr. Elmore. Having parted from Mr. Austin, Rodney paid a few calls on his way to St. Paul's Churchyard. To begin with, he went into a jeweller's shop, and bought a ring set with pearls and diamonds--a simple, inexpensive trifle, which cost six pounds. It was designed for Stella's finger, and was to be her engagement ring. "It won't do," he said to himself, "for it to cost too much, for one of her inquiring family will want to know where I got the money from. She'll value it none the less because 'I can no more, though poor the offering be.'" Then he looked in at the offices of the White Star Steamship Company, and paid a deposit on a berth which he booked on a steamer which was to sail from Liverpool to New York on the following Thursday, booking it in the name of John Griffiths; then into the offices of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, where he booked a berth for the following Friday, from Southampton to Buenos Ayres, in the name of Charles Dickinson; then to the Cunard offices, where he booked for Saturday to New York, in the name of Adolphus Ridgway. Afterwards he visited the Bishop's Registry, in Doctors' Commons, and there, having made certain affidavits, received, in exchange for two sovereigns, a strip of paper which authorised him to marry Gladys Patterson, spinster, at any church in the London diocese. Thus prepared, as one might suppose, for more than one emergency, he paid still another call before proceeding to St. Paul's Churchyard--on Clarence Parmiter, solicitor. From him he wanted to know what forms it would be necessary to go through to enable Miss Patterson to draw on her late father's banking account. Mr. Parmiter explained that to do this it would be necessary, first of all, to prove Mr. Patterson's will--and it was not usual to do that, at any rate, till after the testator was buried. When, Mr. Parmiter asked, was the funeral to take place. In spite of himself, his visitor smiled; so fast had events come crowding on him that the fact that the dead man would have to be put into his grave had entirely escaped his