"The clock's wrong," she said. "Fast, a good half-hour." She seized the little gold carriage clock and shook it in her nervous fingers as if that would put the matter right. The door opened. "Here he is!" she said, and started violently, almost dropping the clock. It was Hugh who came in, his face pale, a fire of excitement gleaming in his eyes, his watch in his hand. "He should have been here half an hour ago. It is as I told you: he has made a bolt," he said. "The dog-cart is not back?" "No; but you'll see!" "Are the men gone to bed, Hugh?" "No, they're in there"; he gave a backward toss of his head in the direction of the smoking-room. "It all makes me sick," he said. "I can't sit there and hee-haw with them." He took up his position between his mother and me, his hands on the mantelpiece, his foot on the fender, and gloomed down upon the hearth. When the hands of the little clock showed that another half-hour had flown, the door was flung open and Daphne came in. "Hasn't he come?" she asked. "I thought you were keeping him away from me, downstairs. Hasn't he even _come_?" "The train is late," the mother said. But Daphne was overwrought. She flung herself upon a chair, and twisting herself so that her arms embraced its back and her face was hidden, began to cry hysterically. "There has been an accident," she sobbed, presently, lifting her head. "Hamley has overturned the dog-cart in the dark; Jack has been pitched out; there is no one to help,--and you all stand here! You all stand here!" She insisted that her brother should go at once on his bicycle to see what was amiss. Her distress unnerved the boy, and softened him. He lifted her from the chair, and put his arm round her and led her to the door. "You go to bed, Dapple-ducky," he said, calling her by the name he had given her in childhood. "It's all right, dear. Don't you be a silly. I'll go along at once and fetch him." His stern resolve was shaken. If Jack Marston had come then he would have relented; I think the marriage would have taken place. But he did not come. He never came. Halfway to the station Hugh Mavor met the dog-cart returning, the groom alone seated in it. There had been an accident, he said; a couple of carriages had run off the line and overturned. He had waited for the surviving passengers to be brought in. The train bringing them had at length arrived; Mr Marston was not among them. The accident had happened ten miles down the line. Hugh got into the dog-cart and drove to the scene of the disaster. Mrs Mavor spent the night in Daphne's room. I awaited Hugh, sitting alone by the drawing-room fire, when he returned at four o'clock in the morning of what was to have been his sister's wedding-day. He came in, carrying a florist's tin box in his hand, and I read the news in his face before he spoke. "Only three killed. He was one. I saw him. I thought I had to. It was awful."