up we should marry to please our
parents if we saw nothing against it. No one would have wanted to bind
me if I did not wish to be bound."

Mrs. Rooke flung up her hands with a dramatic gesture.

"Heaven forgive me, my poor Nelly, for it was I who sent Godfrey from
you! I told him you were engaged to your cousin. I had been told so
explicitly by Lady Drummond herself. How could I doubt that it was
true?"

Nelly turned a white face towards her. Oddly enough, in spite of its
pallor the face had a certain illumination.

"So he went away because of that. Only that stood between us. Do you
think I am going to let that--a lie, a mistake--stand between us? I am
going to break off my engagement, even at the eleventh hour."

The daughter of the Drummonds had found the courage of her race. She
stared uncomprehendingly at the alarm in Mrs. Rooke's expression.

"Don't do anything rash," the little woman said, in a frightened voice.
"Supposing Godfrey did not come back. Supposing----"

Again there sounded in the distance the voices of the vendors of evening
papers. The voices came nearer, one, two, half a dozen of them. They
were all shouting together.

"There must be some news," Mrs. Rooke said under her breath.

"I shall come and see you to-morrow," Nelly said. "To-morrow I shall be
free to come and go where I like. Do you know that I was bidding this
room and you and Bunny a long good-bye five minutes ago? And if he never
comes back--well, he will know I waited for him."

So preoccupied was she with her intention that she never noticed the
newspaper boys and men fluttering their Stop Press editions like the
wings of some birds of evil omen. As she sat in the hansom she drew the
engagement ring off her finger and dropped it into her purse. Then she
sighed, as though an immense burden had fallen from her.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE NEWS IN THE _WESTMINSTER_

As Nelly's hansom drew up at her own door another hansom was just
turning away from it. She wondered with an impatient wonder who could
have come. At the moment she could not have endured any hindrance
between her and her project of telling her father that the engagement
with Robin was to come to an end. She was not in the least afraid of
what she had to do. The spirit of the Drummonds was thoroughly awake
now.

Beyond her announcement to her father lay something vaguely painful
which at the moment she did not consider. She would have to tell Lady
Drummond a