this humiliating obligation was to no less a person than Arthur Tregent. It was Arthur who was so much on his way--it was Arthur who was catching a train. He noticed his mother's friend as the cab passed into the street, and, with a quick demonstration, caused the driver to pull up. He jumped out, and under the arcade the two men met with every appearance of cordiality, but with conscious confusion. Each of them coloured perceptibly, and Maurice was angry with himself for blushing before a boy. Long afterwards he remembered how cold, and even how hard, was the handsome clearness of the young eyes that met his own in an artificial smile. "You here? I thought you were at Blankley." "I left Blankley yesterday; I'm on my way to Spain." "To Spain? How charming!" "To join a friend there--just for a month or two." "Interesting country--well worth seeing. Your mother's all right?" "Oh, yes, all right. And Miss Glanvil----" Arthur Tregent went on, cheerfully. "Vera's all right?" interrupted Maurice, with a still gayer tone. "Everyone, everything's all right!" Arthur laughed. "Well, I mustn't keep you. Bon voyage!" Maurice Glanvil, after the young man had driven on, flattered himself that in this brief interview he had suppressed every indication of surprise; but that evening he crossed the Channel, and on the morrow he went down to Blankley. "To Spain--to Spain!" the words kept repeating themselves in his ears. He, when he had taken flight in a similar conjunction, had only got, for the time, as far as Boulogne; and he was reminded afresh of the progress of the species. When he was introduced into the drawing-room at Blankley--a chintzy, flowery, friendly expanse--Mrs. Tregent rose before him alone and offered him a face that she had never shown before. She was white and she looked scared; she faltered in her movement to meet him. "I met Arthur in Paris, so I thought I might come." Oh, yes; there was pain in her face, and a kind of fear of him that frightened him, but their hands found each other's hands while she replied: "He went off--I didn't know it." "But you had a letter the next morning," Maurice said. She stared. "How did you know that?" "Who should know better than I? He wrote from London, explaining." "I did what I could--I believed in it!" said Mrs Tregent. "He was charming, for a while." "But he broke down. She's too short, eh?" Maurice asked. "Don't laugh; she's ill." "What's the matter with her?" Mrs. Tregent gave the visitor a look in which there was almost a reproach for the question. "She has had a chill; she's in bed. You must see her."