"I'll tell you what I used to think," said Kate, lashing the pony with considerable vehemence. "I used to think you were a good fellow at heart, though the nonsense had never been taken out of you; that you were only vain and affected on the surface, like lots of you guardsmen, but that there was a _man_ inside the dandy, if one could only get at him. Oh, Captain Vanguard, I'm disappointed in you! If I cared two straws for a fellow, and he did as you've done, I'd never speak to him again! There!" The whip was again dropped on the pony, and they shaved the wheels of an omnibus to an inch. "Don't take it so to heart, Kate!" laughed Frank. "If I _have_ deserted you, I'll come back again. You know, Miss Cremorne, that you are the only woman I ever loved, and all that. Fate has been obdurate; but rather would I be torn with wild----" "_Will_ you be serious?" demanded the fair charioteer, knitting her brows, and looking intensely austere. "Do you know where I am driving you now?" He was incorrigible. "To Gretna, I trust, or the Register Office. That's what I should like with _you_. Let's have it out, Kate. Jump over a broomstick, and the thing's done!" "I'll tell you where you're going," she said gravely: "I am taking you to see Miss Ross!" His whole countenance changed; and with all his self-command, he could not disguise how deeply he was agitated. "Miss Ross!" he stammered. "You have heard from her! You know where she is!" "I have _seen_ her every day for the last fortnight," was the answer. "Seen her battle and bear up against sorrow, sickness, privation--actual want! Ay, many a day, when you've been sitting down to a dinner of four courses and dessert, that woman and her boy--her boy, Captain Vanguard--have not had enough to eat!" "Great heavens, Kate!" he exclaimed. "This is too shocking! Why did I not know of it before?" "Why, indeed!" repeated Kate. "You may well ask yourself the question. Whose duty was it but yours to be answerable for her, poor dear, to find her a home, to provide for her and the child? I don't want to have many words about it. I'm not one of that sort; but I tell you she would have starved--yes--_starved_, if I hadn't happened to run against her by good luck, just in the nick of time." "God bless you, Kate!" His eyes were full of tears, and she looked at him a little less hardly than before, but answered in scornful accents: "Ought such a job as that to have been left to _me_?" "Miss Cremorne! Kate!" he urged; "you think worse of me than I deserve! There is nothing I wouldn't have done, no sacrifice I wouldn't have made, to insure Miss Ross's comfort! It is not my fault, indeed! I give you my word of honour, I have left no stone unturned to discover her place of refuge from the moment she disappeared, and never obtained the slightest trace of her till to-day."