“My cousin is more than a head taller than you are,” she mused. “He would be perfectly able and perfectly sure to kick you. If there’s any other possible way of getting rid of you, I’d rather not trouble him.” “I think I had better have a talk with your cousin, as well as with the parson,” he considered. “I think you had better confine your attentions to the parson. I do, upon my word,” she counselled him. “I am going to make a concession,” said Aymer. “I’m going to give you a night in which to think this thing over. If you care to send me a note, with a cheque in it, so that I shall receive it at the inn by to-morrow at ten o’clock, I’ll take the next earliest train back to town, and I’ll send you a picture in return. If no note comes by ten o’clock, I’ll call on the parson, and tell him all I know about you; and I’ll write a letter to your cousin. Now, good day.” Johannah rang, and Aymer was shown out. VI “|I shan’t be gone long,” Johannah had said, when she left Madame Dornaye and Will at tea in the garden; but time passed, and she did not come back. Will, mounting through various stages and degrees of nervousness, restlessness, anxiety, at last said, “What on earth can be keeping her?” and Madame Dornaye replied, “That is precisely what I am asking myself.” They waited a little longer, and then, “Shall we go back to the house?” he suggested. But when they reached the house they found the drawing-room empty, and—no trace of Johannah. “She may be in her room. I’ll go and see,” said Madame Dornaye. More time passed, and still no Johannah. Nor did Madame Dornaye return to explain her absence.