vening, when her husband had
gone down to the House, she wrote to Lennan:

"Our love must never turn to earthiness as it might have this afternoon.
Everything is black and hopeless. HE suspects. For you to come here is
impossible, and too dreadful for us both. And I have no right to ask you
to be furtive, I can't bear to think of you like that, and I can't bear
it myself. I don't know what to do or say. Don't try to see me yet. I
must have time, I must think."
XIII

Colonel Ercott was not a racing man, but he had in common with others of
his countrymen a religious feeling in the matter of the Derby. His
remembrances of it went back to early youth, for he had been born and
brought up almost within sound of the coaching-road to Epsom. Every
Derby and Oaks day he had gone out on his pony to watch the passing of
the tall hats and feathers of the great, and the pot-hats and feathers of
the lowly; and afterwards, in the fields at home, had ridden races with
old Lindsay, finishing between a cow that judged and a clump of bulrushes
representing the Grand Stand.

But for one reason or another he had never seen the great race, and the
notion that it was his duty to see it had now come to him. He proposed
this to Mrs. Ercott with some diffidence. She read so many books--he did
not quite know whether she would approve. Finding that she did, he added
casually:

"And we might take Olive."

Mrs. Ercott answered dryly:

"You know the House of Commons has a holiday?"

The Colonel murmured:

"Oh! I don't want that chap!"

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Ercott, "you would like Mark Lennan."

The Colonel looked at her most dubiously. Dolly could talk of it as a
tragedy, and a--a grand passion, and yet make a suggestion like that!
Then his wrinkles began slowly to come alive, and he gave her waist a
squeeze.

Mrs. Ercott did not resist that treatment.

"Take Olive alone," she said. "I don't really care to go."

When the Colonel went to fetch his niece he found her ready, and very
half-heartedly he asked for Cramier. It appeared she had not told him.

Relieved, yet somewhat disconcerted, he murmured:

"He won't mind not going, I suppose?"

"If he went, I should not."

At this quiet answer the Colonel was beset again by all his fears. He put
his white 'topper' down, and took her hand.

"My dear," he said, "I don't want to intrude upon your feelings; but--but
is there anything I can do? It's dreadful to see things