Not alone any more! She heard the rustling of branches at the other end of the long green alley, and a footstep--a heavier footfall than Bessie Edgefield's--on the moist gravel. Her heart throbbed with a startled expectancy. Joy or fear? She had no time to know which feeling predominated before she saw her lover coming quickly towards her. He was dressed, not as she had been accustomed to see him in the corduroy waistcoat, short tweed coat, and knickerbockers of rustic out-of-door life, but in a frock-coat, light grey trousers, and white waistcoat, and was wearing a tall hat. She had time to note these details, and the malmaison carnation in his coat, and the light gloves which he was carrying, before he was at her side, looking down at her with wild, bloodshot eyes, grasping her arm with a strong hand, while those smart lavender gloves dropped from his unconscious grasp, and fell on the wet gravel, to be trampled underfoot like weeds. "Why were you not at the church? Why are you wearing that dingy frock? You and your bridesmaids ought to have been ready an hour ago. I have been waiting for you. Have you forgotten what this day means?" "Geoffrey! have not _you_ forgotten? What madness to come back like this! What have you been doing with your life since the fourteenth of November? Where have you been hiding?" "Where? Hiding! Nonsense! I have been travelling. I took it into my head, when Allan was coming back, that you didn't care for me, that he was the favoured lover, in spite of all. I had extorted your promise--and you were sorry you had ever given it. And I thought the best thing for me would be to make myself scarce, to go to Africa, Australia, anywhere. The world is big enough for two people to give each other a wide berth, but not big enough for Allan and me, if you liked him better than me. I was a fool, that's all: a fool to doubt my dearest! But there's no time to lose. We must be married before three. Come to the church as you are. What does it matter? I've put on my war-paint, you see. My valet seemed to think I was mad." "You have seen your mother?" "Yes, she has been plaguing me with questions. I gave her the slip. Allan is there, in my house. The irony of fate, isn't it? Hovering between life and death, my mother told me. How long will he hesitate between two opinions? I left them wondering, and hurried to the church to meet you, only to find emptiness. No one there! Not even the sexton. But there is still time. We can be married--you and I--with the sexton and pew-opener for witnesses, and can start for the other end of the world to-night." "Geoffrey, why did you go away?" she asked, looking up at that wild face with infinite terror in her own. The restless eyes, the convulsive working of the dry hot lips told their story only too plainly, the story of a mind distraught.