"So must I," said Hampstead. "I have to return round by London, and have ever so many things to do in Park Lane. The worst of having two or three houses is that one never knows where one's clothes are. Good-bye, Mrs. Roden. Mind, I depend upon you, and that I have set my heart upon it. You will let me walk with you as far as your door, Miss Fay?" "It is only three doors off," said Marion, "and in the other direction." Nevertheless he did go with her to the house, though it was only three doors off. "Tell your father, with my compliments," he said, "that George Roden can show you the way over. If you can get a cab to bring you across I will send you back in the waggonette. For the matter of that, there is no reason on earth why it should not be sent for you." "Oh, no, my lord. That is, I do not think it possible that we should come." "Pray do, pray do, pray do," he said, as he took her hand when the door at No. 17 was opened. As he walked down the street he saw the figure still standing at the parlour window of No. 10. On the same evening Clara Demijohn was closeted with Mrs. Duffer at her lodgings at No. 15. "Standing in the street, squeezing her hand!" said Mrs. Duffer, as though the very hairs of her head were made to stand on end by the tidings,--the moral hairs, that is, of her moral head. Her head, in the flesh, was ornamented by a front which must have prevented the actual standing on end of any hair that was left to her. "I saw it! They came out together from No. 11 as loving as could be, and he walked up with her to their own house. Then he seized her hand and held it,--oh, for minutes!--in the street. There is nothing those Quaker girls won't allow themselves. They are so free with their Christian names, that, of course, they get into intimacies instantly. I never allow a young man to call me Clara without leave asked and given." "I should think not." "One can't be too particular about one's Christian name. They've been in there together, at No. 11, for two hours. What can that mean? Old Mrs. Vincent was there, but she went away." "I suppose she didn't like such doings." "What can a lord be doing in such a place as that," asked Clara, "--coming so often, you know? And one that has to be a Markiss, which is much more than a lord. One thing is quite certain. It can't mean that he is going to marry Marion Fay?" With this assurance Clara Demijohn comforted herself as best she might. CHAPTER XVIII. HOW THEY LIVED AT TRAFFORD PARK.