* * * * * In the course of a week the election came off, when the Radical candidate headed the poll by a large majority. Despite the exceeding business of that week, Sebastian had found time to pay several visits at 57 Woodford Street, and there had used such arguments with Helena that she had consented to the early marriage he wished for. Sebastian, Mrs. Mallory, and Canon Ponsonby went over to Manchester one evening, and the next day there was a small wedding at a quiet church in some fields. Helena was given away by her uncle of the uncompromisingly truthful disposition. Mrs. Mallory looked calmly dignified. Mrs. Galloway was there, subdued by the fact that Helena had taken the liberty to contradict her hypothesis that governesses always make disastrous marriages. Mrs. Spenceley was there too, weeping in an obtrusive manner; and, when it was all over, they returned to their respective dwellings, except Helena and Sebastian, who went to the London Road station, to a compartment in the Euston express marked ‘engaged.’ They were on their way to Germany, but before they arrived at Euston Square Sebastian had told Helena the whole history of his earlier love for Adrienne, and his own misty conjectures as to how things stood between her and Myles Heywood--a recital which aroused the romantic Helena’s most compassionate and interested feelings--and so ended Sebastian’s courtship. BOOK IV. QUITS. [Illustration] CHAPTER I. ‘_1st Friend._ Well, you’ve tried it: is your problem solved? _2d Friend._ I have lived so long in the dark, I do not know. _1st Friend._ Out, into the wind and sunshine then, and try!’ What is the difference, save in size, between one manufacturing town and another? How will you say, reader, on the first view, where this town lies to which I am about to lead you? You shall have heard no word of the language of its people, seen none of its customs, only had a quick bird’s-eye view of it, with its long chimneys and its canopy of smoke, its blackened grass and dingy trees. Not to make the survey tedious, let me say that it is no English town, but a German one. Let us not linger longer than is needful in its streets; here is a sloping road that leads to the railway station; and here, after ascending the hill, we are within the great noisy arena. Amidst the crowd of hurrying passengers and phlegmatic officials, one figure stood perfectly still on the platform, waiting quietly, and looking composedly around him with quick, observant eyes. Whether a German, an Englishman, or even a Frenchman, the casual observer would have found it hard to say until he spoke, and then the accent would have betrayed the Englishman.