"I believe I know this Mr Naylor. The engagement must be broken off without an hour's delay. The idea is horrible!... I thought I had done with this awful girl. When she left her husband, and refused to listen to right principle and common decency, I washed my hands of her. But this---- It is an unimaginable horror! When does the next train leave for Clam Beach, I wonder? How do you go?" "You cannot go to-night You will not be able to connect," Maida answered in some disgust. The idea of Naylor's coming in and securing the lady, and leaving Roe forlorn, which she had begun to conjure up, was distinctly consoling. She did not like to think of the energetic Miss Rolph intervening to upset the pleasing possibility. Miss Rolph spread out a map. "There is Lippenstock, a station where all trains stop, close by. I can book for there, and drive over in the evening." Maida sighed. "If you go, Miss Rolph, would you kindly mention to Mrs Denwiddie that I am here? You know her, I daresay; you seem to know every one at the Beach. Say I got a telegram--say anything. She is sure to be thinking something dreadful about my going away so sudden-like--without a word, or taking away my things." Miss Rolph, in her agitation, looked round on Maida. She could not help smiling, notwithstanding her anxiety. The world is filled with such a tangle of conflicting interests, and each of us has room in his little brain only for the few which connect with himself. "I do not know the lady, my dear; but I shall mention at the office that you were suddenly called home. I will settle your bill, and bid them pack up and forward your things." CHAPTER XXXII. "YOU MAY TRUST ME TO HOLD MY TONGUE!" The dance at Blue Fish Creek was a success of its kind--the kind which might be expected. It was held in the "town hall," a sort of loft above the station of the village fire-engine, the one large room of the place; used on Sundays as a church by some sect which had not attained to a meeting-house of its own, as a singing-school on winter nights when the younger villagers grew tired of remaining at home, and as general place of gathering where the people met to discuss politics or to be entertained by itinerant players. The hall was crowded and very hot. Three fiddles supplied the squeaking music of catgut in agony, while the young and active disported themselves amid clouds of dust of their own raising. The dances were complicated and strange, being of the kind in which an earlier generation loved to take exercise; but the motley crowd was happy--poussetted, chassied, and performed feats which I can neither name nor spell, with a will.