"The less said about our fashion the better. If you have a stout cloth skirt short enough to keep clear of our mud, that is all you need trouble about. I suppose I shall be allowed to escort Suzette, General?" "Well, yes, I don't see any objection to your taking care of her on the journey; but I have very lax notions of etiquette. I must ask my sister. Suzie will take her maid, of course; and Suzie's maid is a regular dragon." * * * * * Allan walked homeward with a light step and a light heart. The idea of having Suzette as a visitor in his own home, growing every day nearer and dearer to his parents, was rapture. No more concertante duets, no more long-drawn sobbings and sighings on the Stradivarius! He would have his sweetheart all to himself, to pace the level meadow paths, and saunter by the modest river, and loiter by rustic mills and bridges, which Constable may have painted. And in that atmosphere of homely peacefulness he might draw his sweetheart closer to his heart, win her more completely than he had won her yet, and persuade her to consent to a nearer date for their marriage than that far-off summer of the coming year. He counted much on home influences, on his mother's warmhearted affection for the newly adopted daughter. "A telegram, sir," said the servant who opened the door, startling him from a happy day-dream. "It came nearly an hour ago." Allan tore open the envelope and glanced carelessly at the message, expecting some trivial communication. "Your father is dangerously ill. Come at once. I am writing to postpone Miss Vincent's visit.--Emily Carew." CHAPTER II. "BEFORE THE NIGHT BE FALLEN ACROSS THY WAY." A sudden end to a happy day-dream. A hurried preparation and a swift departure. Allan had just time to write to Suzette while his servant was packing a portmanteau and the dog-cart horse was being harnessed for the drive to the station. He loved his father too well to have room for any selfish thoughts about his own disappointment; but he tried to be hopeful and to think that his mother's alarm had exaggerated the evil, and that the word "dangerously" was rather the expression of her own panic than of the doctor's opinion. It was only natural that she should summon him, the only son, to his father's sick-bed. The illness must be appalling in its suddenness; for in her letter, written on the previous day, she had described him as in his usual health. The suddenness of the attack was in itself enough to scare a woman of Lady Emily's temperament. Allan telegraphed from Liverpool Street, and was met at the quiet little terminus, where the tiny branch line came to an end on the edge of a meadow, and a hundred yards from a rustic road. The journey to Cambridge had been one of the swiftest, the twenty miles on the branch line of the slowest; a heart-breaking journey for a man whose mind was racked with fears.