which followed his visit to Myrtle
Villa resulted in a resolve to journey over to Paula the very next day.
He now felt perfectly convinced that the inviting of Captain De Stancy
to visit them at Nice was a second stage in the scheme of Paula's uncle,
the premature announcement of her marriage having been the first. The
roundness and neatness of the whole plan could not fail to recommend
it to the mind which delighted in putting involved things straight,
and such a mind Abner Power's seemed to be. In fact, the felicity, in
a politic sense, of pairing the captain with the heiress furnished
no little excuse for manoeuvring to bring it about, so long as that
manoeuvring fell short of unfairness, which Mr. Power's could scarcely
be said to do.

The next day was spent in furnishing the builders with such instructions
as they might require for a coming week or ten days, and in dropping a
short note to Paula; ending as follows:--

'I am coming to see you. Possibly you will refuse me an interview. Never
mind, I am coming--Yours, G. SOMERSET.'

The morning after that he was up and away. Between him and Paula
stretched nine hundred miles by the line of journey that he found it
necessary to adopt, namely, the way of London, in order to inform his
father of his movements and to make one or two business calls. The
afternoon was passed in attending to these matters, the night in
speeding onward, and by the time that nine o'clock sounded next morning
through the sunless and leaden air of the English Channel coasts, he had
reduced the number of miles on his list by two hundred, and cut off the
sea from the impediments between him and Paula.

On awakening from a fitful sleep in the grey dawn of the morning
following he looked out upon Lyons, quiet enough now, the citizens
unaroused to the daily round of bread-winning, and enveloped in a haze
of fog.

Six hundred and fifty miles of his journey had been got over; there
still intervened two hundred and fifty between him and the end of
suspense. When he thought of that he was disinclined to pause; and
pressed on by the same train, which set him down at Marseilles at
mid-day.

Here he considered. By going on to Nice that afternoon he would
arrive at too late an hour to call upon her the same evening: it would
therefore be advisable to sleep in Marseilles and proceed the next
morning to his journey's end, so as to meet her in a brighter condition
than he could boast of to-day. This he