"It was about our dear children," said Mrs Jones slowly. She looked with a gaze of awakening distrust at her visitor. Her thoughts evidently turned to her husband. "I will hear if Mr Jones has returned," she said. "He would be so sorry to miss you----" She put out her hand to the bell. Mrs Macmichel stopped her hurriedly. "Don't ring!" she said, in the loud voice of alarm. "Please! I will stay till Mr Jones comes back, however long he is away. I promise." Ah, if he would only come! Only half an hour lived through of the two hours yet! Yet, for worlds she would not be present at the meeting of the wife and husband, who then would--know! "I will stay, if you will let me go the very instant he comes," she added. "If you tell me when you see him coming up the garden path, I will run." "He is here!" Mrs Jones said, with an air of relief. "I heard the garden-gate; I know his step----" Oh, not for ten worlds would Flora, who had ever shunned the sight of pain, see that meeting! She almost flung her teacup from her. She seized the other's hand. "Good-bye! oh, good-bye!" she said; "I cannot possibly stay another minute. I am so sorry! Oh, Mrs Jones, will you please remember, I am nearly dead with sorrow--but I must go." "She is certainly mad," said the other woman to herself. She was so astonished that she forgot to rise from her chair, but sat looking after her vanishing guest with eyes wide with dismay. On the doorstep the clergyman and the lady encountered. He was panting as one, all unaccustomed to such exercise, who had run. There was a look of famished eagerness in his eyes, the unhealthy pallor of his face was beaded with drops of sweat. "They told me--at the office--a telegram had been sent," he said. She snatched it from her pocket and put it in his hand. "I kept it from her," she said. "Take it, and let me go." And yet she could not go. His shaking fingers had torn open the envelope, had clutched the enclosure. It wavered so, that, standing behind him, she put her arms round his arms--tall woman as she was--her hands over his, and helped him to steady it. "Read it," he said to her; "I can't--I can't see." So she read aloud to him, in a voice that rose on a note of triumph and finished in a sob, the single line of the message! "Not on board the _Doughty_. Tell mother all right." Mrs Jones, coming to the dining-room door, looked out for one instant on her husband, apparently clutched in Mrs Macmichel's embrace. In the next, the lady was speeding with her long stride down the path to the gate; the clergyman had staggered into a hall chair, a succession of sounds, something between sobs and hiccoughs, issuing from his throat. "My dear, has she hurt you?" his wife cried excitedly. "She is mad--quite mad, I am sure!" * * * * *