ne. The Vidame's man packed
his clothes. Mrs. Brown-Smith was apprised of these occurrences in the
drawing-room before dinner.

'I am very sorry for dear Matilda,' she cried. 'But it is an ill wind
that blows nobody good. I will drive over with the Vidame and astonish
my Johnnie by greeting him at the station. I must run and change my
dress.'

She ran, she returned in morning costume, she heard from Mrs. Malory of
the summons by telegram calling the cook to her moribund mother. 'I must
send her over to the station in a dog-cart,' said Mrs. Malory.

'Oh no,' cried Mrs. Brown-Smith, with impetuous kindness, 'not on a night
like this; it is a cataclysm. There will be plenty of room for the cook
as well as for Methven and me, and the Vidame, in the brougham. Or _he_
can sit on the box.'

The Vidame really behaved very well. The introduction of the cook, to
quote an old novelist, 'had formed no part of his profligate scheme of
pleasure.' To elope from a hospitable roof, with a married lady,
accompanied by her maid, might be an act not without precedent. But that
a cook should come to form _une partie carree_, on such an occasion, that
a lover should be squeezed with three women in a brougham, was a trying
novelty.

The Vidame smiled, 'An artist so excellent,' he said, 'deserves a far
greater sacrifice.'

So it was arranged. After a tender and solitary five minutes with
Matilda, the Vidame stepped, last, into the brougham. The coachman
whipped up the horses, Matilda waved her kerchief from the porch, the
guilty lovers drove away. Presently Mrs. Malory received, from her
daughter's maid, the letter destined by the Vidame for Matilda. Mrs.
Malory locked it up in her despatch box.

The runaways, after a warm and uncomfortable drive of three-quarters of
an hour, during which the cook wept bitterly and was very unwell, reached
the station. Contrary to the Vidame's wish, Mrs. Brown-Smith, in an
ulster and a veil, insisted on perambulating the platform, buying the
whole of Mr. Hall Caine's works as far as they exist in sixpenny
editions. Bells rang, porters stationed themselves in a line, like
fielders, a train arrived, the 9.17 from Liverpool, twenty minutes late.
A short stout gentleman emerged from a smoking carriage, Mrs.
Brown-Smith, starting from the Vidame's side, raised her veil, and threw
her arms round the neck of the traveller.

'You didn't expect _me_ to meet you on such a night, did you, Johnn