They went through the dusky garden to the old-fashioned five-barred gate which opened on to a circular drive. The night was cool and grey, and the white bloom of a catalpa tree gleamed ghost-like among the dark masses of the shrubbery. A bat wheeled across the greyness in front of the lovers, as they kissed and parted. "Until I can get the licence," he repeated, with his happy laugh. "We'll wait for nothing else." "You will have to wait for me," she answered, tossing up her head, and running away, a swift white figure, vanishing in the bend of the drive as he stood watching her. "Thank God!" he ejaculated. "The reward is worth all that has gone before." CHAPTER X. "AM I HIS KEEPER?" Before the sun had gone down upon the second day after Geoffrey's return, his engagement to Miss Vincent had become known to almost every member of Matcham society who had any right to be posted in the proceedings of the _élite_. Mrs. Mornington, dropping in at her brother's house after breakfast, and before her daily excursion to the village, was transformed into a statue of surprise on the very threshold of the hall at hearing fiddling in her brother's drawing-room, unmistakably fiddling of a superior order; a fiddle whose grandiose chords rose loud and strong above the rippling notes of a piano--a quaint old melody of Porpora's, in strongly marked common time--a fairy-like accompaniment of delicate treble runs, light as a gauzy veil flung over the severe outlines of a bronze statue. "She must be having accompanying lessons," thought Mrs. Mornington. "Some fiddler from Salisbury, I suppose." She marched into the drawing-room with the privileged unceremoniousness of an aunt, and found Geoffrey Wornock standing beside the piano, at which Suzette was sitting fresh as a rose, in a pale green frock, that looked like the calix of a living flower. "Home!" cried Mrs. Mornington, with a step backward, and again becoming statuesque; "and I have been picturing you as eaten by tigers, or tomahawked by savages!" "The African tiger is only a panther, and there are no tomahawks," answered Geoffrey, laying down his bow, and going across the room to shake hands with Mrs. Mornington, the Amati still under his chin. "And Allan? Where is Allan?" "I left him on his way to the Congo." "You left him!--came back without him?" "Yes. He wanted to extend his travels--to cross Africa. I was not so ambitious. I only wanted to come home." His smile, as he turned to look at Suzette, told the astute matron all she desired to know. "So," she exclaimed, "is the weathercock nailed to the vane at last?" "The ship which has been tossing so long upon a sunless sea, is safe in her haven," answered Geoffrey.