And we are bound to allow that neither the Duchess, who was his faithful wife, nor Winton, always ready to appreciate the noble sentiments of Lady Jane, could ever understand the fulness of this reconciliation. It is to be hoped that the reader will comprehend better. They were too resentful and indignant to resume their old relations in a moment as if nothing had happened, which Lady Jane did with perhaps more tenderness than before. But into this question there is no time to enter. When Lady Jane went in softly, as if she had left her mother half an hour before, into the morning-room, the Duchess flung away her papers with a great cry, and rushed upon her daughter, clasping her almost fiercely, looking over her shoulder with all the ferocity of a lioness in defence of her offspring. She would have ordered the carriage at once to take Lady Jane away, or even have gone with her on the spot, on foot or in a cab, to a place of safety: but Lady Jane would not hear of any such proceeding. She calmed her mother, as she had soothed her father, and in an hour’s time Winton was in that little room, which suddenly was turned into Paradise. He had been carrying about with him all this time a special licence ready for use, and as everything can be done at a moment’s notice in town, even in February, Lady Jane Altamont, attended by a small but quite sufficient train, and before a whole crowd of excited witnesses, was married next morning at St George’s, Hanover Square, like everybody else of her degree. Needless to say that there was in the ‘Morning Post’ next morning, as well as in most of the other papers, an account of the ceremony, with a delicate hint of difficulties, unnecessary to enter into, which had gone before. This was read by many who understood, and by a great many more who did not understand; but nowhere with greater excitement than in the rectory-house of St Alban’s, E.C., where Mrs Marston took the fashionable paper, poor lady, because in that wilderness she was so out of the way of everything. She rushed in upon her husband in his study (who had just seen it in the ‘Standard’ with feelings which are indescribable) with the broadsheet in her hand. “Listen to this, William,” she cried solemnly; “didn’t I tell you it was none of our business to meddle! and your fine Duke, whom you were so anxious to be serviceable to, and that never said thank you---- But I told you what you had to expect,” Mrs Marston cried. THE FUGITIVES. CHAPTER I.