Tregarvon backed out of the group and fanned himself with his hat. There were still traces of the shocked grin to temper the mask of feverish anxiety which was slowly displacing it. Everything he had ever written to Elizabeth about Richardia--everything he had ever told Richardia about Elizabeth--clamored for instant recollection and revision in the light of the unnerving fact that the two of them were here on the Coalville platform, together, as friends of long standing. The train had moved on, the loungers were dispersing, and Miss Birrell was leading the way to the venerable surrey. [Illustration: “Poictiers, I’m a ruined man!”] “Mr. Carfax has promised me that he will drive you up to Westwood House to-morrow. I think you will be very sure to come, now,” she said, after Tregarvon had flogged himself into some livelier sense of the requirements of the moment. Then she added: “You may come as early as you please.” “I think I shall be very ill to-morrow,” he returned gravely, as he handed her into the carriage. “These sudden shocks are very bad--for the heart.” Then, while Carfax was helping Miss Wardwell to the front seat with the judge: “I didn’t believe you could be so wicked!” “I am not the wicked one,” was the quick retort. “I tried to tell you last Wednesday; that was why I asked Mr. Carfax to drive down to where you were working. But you wouldn’t let me.” “If I am not too ill to come, you must let me see you first, before I--” Tregarvon was beginning; but Miss Richardia was not willing to be dragged even into the vicinity of things confidential. “Hear him!” she said to Miss Wardwell; “Mr. Tregarvon is intimating that we have made him ill, between us!” Then she spoke to her father: “Judge Birrell, you will please command these two young gentlemen to report to you to-morrow at Westwood House--do you hear?” The judge gave the invitation in due and courteous form, and Carfax accepted promptly for himself and for Tregarvon. After which the big dapple gray, mildly urged by his master, began to jog up and down and the age-worn surrey crept out of sight around the barrier rank of coke-ovens. “We might have offered to take them up in the motor,” said Carfax, when the afterthought had been given time to come to the surface. “_You_ might have,” Tregarvon returned moodily. “I wouldn’t trust myself to drive a wheel-barrow in the present state of things.” Carfax was about to swing himself behind the wheel to drive the car over to its shed and he paused with a foot on the running-board. “When it comes to wrestling with the fateful tangles, you haven’t so much the best of me as you may think you have--thanks to your little gift of letter-writing,” he remarked darkly.