"Not a word. Be easy. Have I not told you you might trust me?" Seeking the presence of his mother, he startled her by saying he was at once going up to London, by a night train. In vain Mrs. St. John strove to combat his resolution, to ascertain particulars of the stormy interview just passed. Even as she was pressing for it, he kissed her, and was gone; asking Brumm to see that his things were sent after him. Swinging away from the door in his independence, he commenced his walk to the station at Lexington, with a step firm and fleet, as became an angry man. For a very short way his road lay through the covered walk, and here, as he was going along in his haste, he encountered Mrs. Beauclerc, her niece and daughter. "Were you coming to escort us?" asked Georgina, her words ready as usual. "I am hastening to Lexington," he said. "I am going back to London by the first train that passes." "What for?" He made no reply. He turned to Mrs. Beauclerc, asking if he could do anything for her in town. "Nothing, thank you," she answered, "unless you should see the dean. He was to be in London about this time, I believe. _I_ can do nothing with her; she's placing herself beyond my control. Would you believe that she was out some hours today, never coming in until dark, and she will not tell me what was keeping her or who she was with!" Frederick St. John hardly heard the complaint. He turned to Sarah, who had walked on, as if impatient at the encounter. "Will you not say God speed to me? I may not be here again for a long, long time." She did not put out her hand. She simply wished him good evening. Just this same freezing conduct had she observed to him in the one or two interviews that had taken place since his arrival. Who knows but it was the turning-point in their destiny? But for this repellent manner, made unnecessarily so, and which had told so disagreeably on him, he might in this contest with his brother have said: "Not Anne my wife; change her for another, and I will not say you nay." That it would have been listened to by Isaac St. John, there was little doubt. "I never saw mamma in such a passion," whispered the giddy girl to him when the others went on. "I had kept dinner waiting, you see, and nothing exasperates her like that. Then she wanted to know where I had been: 'Out with the gipsies,' I answered. I couldn't tell the truth, you know. She was so mad!" "And where had you been?" "Where had I been! That's good! In this very grove; here; watching for the carriage of Mr. St. John. I came into it at half-past twelve, and never got out of it until between six and seven!" "You are a good and true girl, Georgina, though you are random," he said, taking her hand and speaking in a softer tone than she generally heard from him. "How shall I repay you for what you have done for me?"