as going to do right, she was
going to say goodbye,--surely even Teresa would not grudge her her short
hour!

Cassandra put on a shady hat, and stood before the long mirror regarding
her own reflection as a woman will who is about to meet her lover. The
white dress fell in soft lines accentuating her long slimness, the hat
was white also, a simple affair of straw, with a twisted scarf of
_crepe_, the gold-flecked hair, the soft carmine of the cheeks, the
blue, pathetic eyes gained an added beauty from the lack of colour.

Cassandra knew that she was beautiful at that moment, she also knew that
that beauty would plant a sharper thorn in Dane's heart, but being a
woman she rejoiced nevertheless. If she could have made herself more
lovely, she would have done it unto ten times ten. She turned from the
mirror, opened the door of her room, and crept quietly downstairs. It
was her desire that no one should see her or know that she had left the
house. Once the great hall was reached she would slip into the library,
and thence through the open window to a side path giving access to a
shrubbery, thereby avoiding observation from upstair windows or from the
gardeners at work on the terrace beds. Then let what might happen, she
would be undisturbed for the afternoon.

She had reached the lowest step, the library was but a few yards away,
when fate shot her bolt. The door of Bernard's office opened, and he
came towards her, telegram in hand. Many telegrams arrived at the
Court. Cassandra was too much a woman of the world to share the fear
with which many of her sisters regard the orange-coloured sheets, but
she needed no words to tell her that this message was no mere business
communication. At the mere sight her heart died within her. There was
just one thing on earth which she lived for at that moment, and the
telegram had come to block her way. She stood still and cold waiting
Bernard's explanation.

"Look here, I say,--here's bad news! The old Mater. Taken worse this
morning. Another stroke. The second this time, so it may mean the end.
Jevons has been looking up the trains."

Cassandra did not speak. The old Mater was a venerable and disagreeable
old lady whose bronchitic tendencies had made it necessary to abandon
the dower house and make her abode in a more southern county. The
necessity had been to the daughter-in-law a matter of continual
thanksgiving, but to the Squire a real regret. His intensely