“You’re right, Mrs. Delaval, it might be done,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “How long has the mail taken to come to England--twenty-eight days?--the same going out. It is a desperate chance!--yet would it be a satisfaction to know the worst. Poor boy!--poor Charlie!--game to the last, I see, in the general order. What think ye, Mrs. Delaval; would it be any use?” “If I was a man,” replied Mary, “I should be in the train for Southampton at this moment.” Frank rang the bell; the waiter appeared with an alacrity that looked as if he had been listening at the keyhole. “Bring my bill,” said Frank to that astonished functionary, “and have a cab at the door in twenty minutes.” “You are going, Mr. Hardingstone?” said Mary, clasping her hands; “God bless you for it!” “I am going,” replied Frank, putting the short pipe carefully away, and pulling out the small black portmanteau. “You will start to-day?” asked Mary, with an expression of admiration on her sorrowing countenance for a decision of character so in accordance with her own nature. “In twenty minutes,” replied Frank, still packing for hard life; and he was as good as his word. His things were ready; his bill paid; his servant furnished with the necessary directions during his master’s absence; and himself in the cab, on his way to his bankers, and from thence to the railway station, in exactly twenty minutes from the moment of his making up his mind to go. “Tell Blanche I’ll bring him back safe and sound,” said he, as he shook hands with Mary on the hotel steps; “and--and--tell her,” he added, with a deeper tint on his bronzed, manly cheek, “tell her that I--I had no time to wish her good-bye.”