that the "First Division" of the races was always very dull,
and that they had much better let him go to it alone,--when he told them
that it was always very rowdy, and that ladies were not supposed to be
there--oh, why had they not guessed and clung to him, and kept him away
from the river?

Well, here they were, walking on Harold's either side, blind to fate,
and only longing to look back at the gorgeous personage behind them.
Aunt Mabel had inwardly calculated that the velvet of the mantle alone
could not have cost less than four guineas a yard. One good look back,
and she would be able to calculate how many yards there were... She
followed the example of Lot's wife; and Jessie followed hers.

"Very well," said Harold. "That settles it. I go alone." And he was gone
like an arrow, across the High, down Oriel Street.

The two women stood staring ruefully at each other.

"Pardon me," said the Duke, with a sweep of his plumed hat. "I observe
you are stranded; and, if I read your thoughts aright, you are impugning
the courtesy of that young runagate. Neither of you, I am very sure, is
as one of those ladies who in Imperial Rome took a saucy pleasure in the
spectacle of death. Neither of you can have been warned by your escort
that you were on the way to see him die, of his own accord, in company
with many hundreds of other lads, myself included. Therefore, regard his
flight from you as an act not of unkindness, but of tardy compunction.
The hint you have had from him let me turn into a counsel. Go back, both
of you, to the place whence you came."

"Thank you SO much," said Aunt Mabel, with what she took to be great
presence of mind. "MOST kind of you. We'll do JUST what you tell us.
Come, Jessie dear," and she hurried her niece away with her.

Something in her manner of fixing him with her eye had made the Duke
suspect what was in her mind. Well, she would find out her mistake soon
enough, poor woman. He desired, however, that her mistake should be made
by no one else. He would give no more warnings.

Tragic it was for him, in Merton Street, to see among the crowd
converging to the meadows so many women, young and old, all imprescient,
troubled by nothing but the thunder that was in the air, that was on the
brows of their escorts. He knew not whether it was for their escorts or
for them that he felt the greater pity; and an added load for his heart
was the sense of his partial responsibility for what impended. But