after.'

'After marriage, you mean? Oh, there would be a scene, a few hysterics
perhaps, and there the matter would be at an end. A wife can't afford to
be so punctilious as a maiden fancy free. She has herself too much to
lose.'

George accepted the maternal advice, and went out to Mauchline after
business hours that very day.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XLI.

A GREAT RELIEF.

Next afternoon Gladys herself drove the lawyer and his wife from
Bourhill to the station.

'Now, my dear,' said Mrs. Fordyce, as they were about to part, 'I shall
allow the girls to come down on Saturday, on condition that you return
with them at the end of a week, prepared to accompany us to London.'

Gladys nodded, with a bright smile.

'Yes, I shall do everything you wish. I believe I am rather tired of
having my own way, and I should not mind having a change, even from
Bourhill.'

As they stood lingering a little over their good-byes, a train from
Glasgow came puffing into the station, and, with a sudden gleam of
expectation, Mrs. Fordyce glanced anxiously at the alighting passengers.

'My dear, why, there is George! actually George himself.'

Gladys cast a startled glance in the direction indicated and the colour
mounted high to her brow, then faded quite, leaving her rather
strikingly pale.

'Why does he come here?' she asked quickly, 'I have not asked him.'

'Unless you have broken off your engagement with him, Gladys, he has a
right to come whether you ask him or not. Tom dear, here is our train
now, and we must run over that bridge. We dare not miss it, I suppose?'

'I daren't, seeing I have to take the chair at a dinner in the Windsor
Hotel to-night,' replied the lawyer; 'but if you like to remain a little
longer, why not, Isabel?'

Mrs. Fordyce hesitated a moment. Her nephew was giving up his ticket to
the collector at the little gate, and their train was impatiently
snorting at the opposite platform.

'I had better go,' she decided quickly, as her husband began to run off.
Turning to Gladys, she gave her a hasty kiss, and observed seriously,--

'Be kind to poor George, Gladys; he is very fond of you, and you can
make anything of him you like. Write to me, like a dear, this evening,
after he is away.'

She would have liked a word in her nephew's private ear also, but time
forbade it. She waved her hand to him from the steps of the bridge, but
he was so occupied looking at Gladys that he did not return her