t of work there on Sunday, I could always
absent myself from office on a Saturday. So I agreed to go. On the
Friday Fanny seemed unusually calm and well. I was quite excited over
the prospect of our little jaunt, and Fanny herself appeared to think
cheerfully and kindly of it. In the lodging we occupied at that time I
had a tiny bedroom of my own. I woke very early on the Saturday
morning, but when I found it was barely five o'clock turned over for
another doze. When next I woke it was to find, greatly to my
annoyance, that the hour was half-past eight; and there were several
little things I wanted to have done before starting for Victoria. I
hurried into our sitting-room before dressing, meaning to rouse Fanny,
whose room opened from it. But she was not in her bedroom, and
returning to the other room I found a note on the table.

'I am not feeling well,' the note said, 'and cannot come with you to-day.
So I shall spend the day with mother, and be back here about tea-time.'

For a moment I thought of hurrying round to Mrs. Pelly's, and seeing
if I could prevail on Fanny to change her mind. But I hated going to
that house, and, of late, I had had some experience of the futility of
trying to influence Fanny in any way during these sullen morning
hours, when she was very often possessed by a sort of lethargy, any
interference with which provoked only excessive irritation.

It was most disappointing. But-- 'Very well, then,' I muttered to
myself, 'she must stay with her mother. I can't leave Heron waiting at
Victoria.'

So I dressed and proceeded direct to the station, relying upon having
a few minutes to spare there during which to break my fast in the
refreshment-room.

Heron nodded rather grimly over my explanation of Fanny's absence, and
we were both pretty silent during the journey to Dorking. But once out
in the open, and tramping along a country road, we breathed deeper of
an air clean enough to dispel town-bred languors. I felt my spirits
rise, and we began to talk. The day was admirable, beginning with
light mists, and ripening, by the time we began our tramp, into that
mellow splendour which October does at times vouchsafe, especially in
the gloriously wooded country which lies about Leith Hill.

The foliage, the occasional scent of burning wood--always a talisman
for one who has slept in the open--glimpses of new-fallowed fields of
an exquisite rose-madder hue, bracken and heather underfoot, and
overhead b