he vestibule. It seemed an ordinary situation, but
something in the latter's face convinced me that interests of no small
moment depended upon the interview about to take place.

But before I could decide upon their nature or satisfy myself as to the
full meaning of Mr. Gryce's manner, she had started back from the
carriage door and was saying to him in a tone of modest embarrassment:

"There is a gentleman in the carriage; you must have made some mistake."

Mr. Gryce, who had evidently expected a different result from his
stratagem, hesitated for a moment, during which I felt that he read her
through and through; then he responded lightly:

"I made a mistake, eh? Oh, possibly. Look in the other carriage, my
child."

With an unaffected air of confidence she turned to do so, and I turned
to watch her, for I began to understand the "scheme" at which I was
assisting, and foresaw that the emotion she had failed to betray at the
door of the first carriage might not necessarily be lacking on the
opening of the second.

I was all the more assured of this from the fact that Miss Althorpe's
stately figure was very plainly to be seen at that moment, not in the
coach Miss Oliver was approaching, but in an elegant victoria just
turning the corner.

My expectations were realized; for no sooner had the poor girl swung
open the door of the second hack, than her whole body succumbed to a
shock so great that I expected to see her fall in a heap on the
pavement. But she steadied herself up with a determined effort, and with
a sudden movement full of subdued fury, jumped into the carriage and
violently shut the door just as the first carriage drove off to give
place to Miss Althorpe's turn-out.

"Humph!" sprang from Mr. Gryce's lips in a tone so full of varied
emotions that it was with difficulty I refrained from rushing down the
stoop to see for myself who was the occupant of the coach into which my
late patient had so passionately precipitated herself. But the sight of
Miss Althorpe being helped to the ground by her attendant lover,
recalled me so suddenly to my own anomalous position on her stoop, that
I let my first impulse pass and concerned myself instead with the
formation of those apologies I thought necessary to the occasion. But
those apologies were never uttered. Mr. Gryce, with the infinite tact he
displays in all serious emergencies, came to my rescue, and so
distracted Miss Althorpe's attention that she failed to ob