It was not till some time after that Bertram followed him up to the hall. He had neither taken Nelly’s violets nor Tiny’s daisies, though he had looked at them both with feelings which half longed for and half despised such poor tokens of the two who had fled from him. The thought of poor Mr. Wradisley’s mistake gave him again and again a spasm of inaudible laughter as he went along the winding ways after him. After all, was it not a willful mistake, a piece of false sentiment altogether? for the man might have remembered, he said to himself, that Nelly wore violets, autumn violets, and not forget-me-nots. When he got to the house, Bertram found, as he had expected, a telegram summoning him to instant departure. He had taken means to have it sent when he passed through the village. And the same afternoon went away, offering many regrets for the shortness of his visit. “Three days--a poor sort of Saturday to Monday affair,” said Mrs. Wradisley. “You must come again and give us the rest that is owing to us.” “It is just my beastly luck,” Bertram said. As for Lucy, she tried to throw a great deal of meaning into her eyes as she bade him good-by; but Bertram did not in the least understand what the meaning was. He had an uncomfortable feeling for the moment, as if it might be that Lucy’s heart had been touched, unluckily, as her brother’s had been; but grew hot all over with shame, looking again at her innocent, intent face though what was in it, it was not given to him to read. What Lucy would have said had she dared would have been, “Oh, Mr. Bertram, go home to your wife and live happy ever after!” but this of course she had no right to say. Ralph, however, the downright, whom no one suspected of tact or delicacy, said something like it as he walked with his friend to the station. Or rather it was at the very last moment as he shook hands through the window of the railway carriage. “Good-by, Bertram,” he said; “I’d hunt up Mrs. Bertram and make it up, if I were you. Things like that can’t go on forever, don’t you know.” “There’s something in what you say, Wradisley,” Bertram replied. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Two Strangers, by Margaret Oliphant