“Then if she knew soon, she wouldn’t go?” asked Gladys. “I’m going to see her to-morrow,” she added. “Dear Muriel,” said Mrs. le Mentier. “Shall I take her any message from you?” Gladys questioned. “I think,” said Mrs. le Mentier, “that I must go myself to wish her _bon voyage_.” Mrs. le Mentier went home and arranged two little packets of letters—letters that might have been burned, that ought to have been burned, only that some women have the fatal habit of holding on to the wrong things. Gladys went upstairs and cried, and hated herself, and bathed her eyes, and hated Muriel more. Meanwhile, quite unconsciously, Muriel packed her trunk and gave last directions to Cynthia about the club and its management in her absence, and in her heart she prayed, “O God, let him live—let him live.” And Jack Hurstly fought with death and heat and India through long hours of breathless night. The boat did not sail until evening, and as Muriel parted from Cynthia Grant to go on to her uncle’s on a cold, chilly November morning a hansom drove to the door, and Gladys, deeply veiled, sprang out. She greeted Muriel with her old tender affection. In a minute or more they were rattling away through the dim streets together. “I can’t understand,” said Gladys at last, “what it all means. You cannot be breaking your word to me—you cannot. I have trusted you so. But I have waited so long for an explanation, and it has never come, and now you are going to him.” Muriel looked steadily at her companion with unfaltering, sad eyes. “I made a terrible mistake,” she said gently. “For a while I thought it in my power to give to you that which can’t be transferred. But why should we talk of this now?—even while we speak he may have passed beyond it all!” Gladys wrung her hands together desperately. “He is mine,” she muttered—“mine—and I shall never see his face again!” Then suddenly she controlled herself. “You have broken your word?” she asked. “I have,” said Muriel. “Do you expect a marriage founded on broken promises to prosper?” “Hush! he may be dead,” said Muriel. The hansom drove up to the door; the two girls looked at each other; Gladys did not get out, but as Muriel moved towards the house she leaned out of the window. “I pray to God he is dead,” she said quietly, then she gave the address to the cabman. She left a card at Mrs. le Mentier’s door: “Muriel is with her uncle—they go to-night.” CHAPTER XV “Have you no assurance that, earth at end; Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend In that higher sphere to which yearnings tend.” “I HOPE, my dear,” said Mrs. le Mentier, “that I am not too frightfully out of place. But the fog drove me to you—it positively did. Mystery is so more-ish, and you know how dreadfully curious I am. When were you first engaged to Jack, dear?” Muriel smiled. “I don’t know, truly,” she said, “for it feels now as if it was always.”