'He would go there as readily as anywhere else, if you left it to me. I tell you what,' he added, as if the idea had just occurred to him, 'suppose _I_ go down to Plymouth and catch him there? I don't mind the journey a bit.' 'No,' said Mark; '_I_ am going to meet him. I must be the first to see him. After that, if he likes to go away with you, he can.' 'Then you _are_ going down after all?' said Caffyn. 'What are you going to say to him?' 'That is my affair,' said Mark. 'Oh, I beg pardon! I only meant that if you say anything to him about this wedding, or even let him think the Langtons are in town, I may as well give up any idea of getting him to come away with me. Look here! you might do me a good turn, particularly when you know you won't be sorry to get him off your hands yourself. Tell him you're going abroad in a day or two (that's true; you're going to Switzerland for your honeymoon, you know), and let him think the Langtons are away somewhere on the Continent. It's all for his good; he'll want mountain air and a cheerful companion like me to put him right again. He'll be the first to laugh at an innocent little deception like that.' But Mark had done with deceptions, as he told himself. 'I shall tell him what I think he ought to know,' he said firmly, and Caffyn, with all his keenness, mistook the purpose in his mind. 'I'll take that for an answer,' he said, 'and I shan't leave town to-morrow on the chance of his being able to go.' And so they parted. 'Ought I to have let him see that I knew?' Caffyn was thinking when he was alone again. 'No, I don't want to frighten him. I think he will play my game without it.' Mark went back to the Langtons and dined there. Afterwards he told Mabel privately that he would be obliged to leave town for a day or two on pressing business. There was no mistaking his extreme reluctance to go, and she understood that only the sternest necessity took him away at such a time, trusting him too entirely to ask any questions. But as they parted she said, 'It's only for two days, Mark, isn't it?' 'Only for two days,' he answered. 'And soon we shall be together--you and I--for all our lives,' she said softly, with a great happiness in her low tones. 'I ought to be able to give you up for just two days, Mark!'