In another moment he would have spoken, but during that moment a bluff, elderly professor, who had been looking at Mona with much interest and perplexity, suddenly seized her hand. "Why, I declare it is Yum-Yum!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "No wonder she took us by surprise on a deserted coast, when she wins an ovation like this at Burlington House!" Mona stopped to speak, and Dudley passed on. No wonder, indeed! What a blind bat, what an utter imbecile, he had been! and how he had babbled to her of his past, present, and future, while she had sat looking at him, with infinite simplicity and frankness in her honest eyes! His lip curled with a cynical smile. "Bravo, old chap!" said Melville's friendly voice. "It was a genuine consolation to my misanthropic mind to reflect that one of those medals was well earned." Ralph stopped for a minute or two to speak to his friend, and then went down the steps. Most of the carriages had gone, but, a few yards from the door, a pair of fine bays were pawing the ground. Ralph looked up and recognised his Anglo-Indian friend, Sir Douglas Munro; but Sir Douglas was waiting for a lady, and had no eyes for the clever young doctor. Ralph's glance wandered on to the next carriage, and when it came idly back to the bays, he saw that the lady had arrived. Nay, more, the lady was looking at him with a very eloquent face. "Dr Dudley," she said, almost below her breath. For an instant Dudley hesitated,--then gravely lifted his hat and walked on. He could not speak to her now; he must have time to think. It seemed to him that his very soul was torn in two. One half loved Mona, clamoured for her, stretched out blind hands that longed to take her on any terms, unquestioning; but the other half refused to be carried away by glamour and mere blind impulse, the other half was outraged by this trivial motiveless deception, the other half had dreamed of an ideal marriage and would not be put off with anything short of its ideal. How little he knew of her, after all! He had not met her a dozen times--what wonder if he had been mistaken! While he wrestled thus with himself, the mail-phaeton bowled rapidly past him. Dudley laughed gloomily. And he had meant her to trudge along Regent Street with him, and "tell him what it all meant"! What a hopeless imbecile he had been! How could he guess that Mona would cheerfully have given three years' income to leave her uncle at that moment, and "trudge along Regent Street" with him? "Who is that young fellow?" Sir Douglas was saying. "I seem to know his face." "He is a Dr Dudley," Mona answered, stooping low to arrange the carriage-rug over her feet. "Oh, to be sure. I remember--a clever fellow." Sir Douglas fell a-musing for a few minutes. "How did you pick him up, Mona? He told me when I last saw him that he did not know any of the women-students." CHAPTER LV. LUCY TO THE RESCUE. "I have an idea, Mona," said Lucy.