“Yes, indeed. I think now, perhaps, it might be the very best thing you could do. I’m sure he’d take care of you for my sake. Only----” “Only what, Ira?” She put her young arms about my neck, tearfully, entreatingly: “Must you take this man with you, Richard?” “Geoletti, do you mean?” “How is he so much better than the other? To know of that dreadful thing, and keep it secret just for his own profit!” “He was educated to another code of morals than ours, Ira. It’s no good thinking of the gulf between us; but you must see that his company is indispensable to me.” “I suppose I must. Will you be gone for long?” “I can’t say. But I will write to you every day, and twice a day, if you like.” “Will you? Will you really? I shall be miserable until you are safe home again. Richard”--she held me closer--“there is one thing yet which I haven’t dared to speak about--Mrs Dalston.” With a woman’s sensitive intuition, she had found, and touched in sympathy, the real most poignant nerve of this complex tragedy. The point had not even occurred to Lord Skene. “I understand what you mean, dearest,” I said softly. “If all surmise is justified, I am hounding to his doom the husband of my mother.” “And she would wish it so, you believe?” “I am bound to believe it.” “O, Richard! is it not the most tragic thing of all that you should have wasted all your poor heart of love in pleading to a mother that was no mother to you, and, when the real one came, that you should have turned from her like a stranger?” “It is the most tragic thing, Ira--and the worst that I cannot bring myself even now to look upon her as anything but Mrs Dalston.” She sighed. “It is all a dreadful tangle. I wish it were unravelled and done with.” “I am going to unravel it, for better or worse. And, if for worse, Ira?” She kissed me, of her own sweet will, in a passion of tears. “I don’t care about a name, Richard. I don’t want to be Lady Skene. You could never be more to me than you are. If you will only come back to me, the same as you are now, my heart will have room for not one other joy.” CHAPTER XXV. JOHNNY AT HOME Away with wooer’s gallivanting, and all the soft and sugary stuff of dreams. A sterner wind than Zephyr speeds me on my way, and lands me, hard of purpose, in the midst of London, and blows me with a crack up against Johnny’s door. He is established for the time being, with his mother, in a luxurious flat in Victoria Street, and the round red-glass stove in his hall is not more glowing with a warmth of welcome than is the face with which he greets me. “I say, Dick,” he says presently, “who spoke of fairies?” “Not I, Johnny.” “Didn’t you? I say, how’s Miss Christmas, Dick?” “She is very well, Johnny; she and I are engaged to be married.”