ge beside him.

'What's this? You coming?'

'I will give you no trouble.'

'Well, you may help to manage the girl;' and he lay back, relieved to be
off, but already spent by the hurry of the last two hours. Phoebe could
sit and--no--not think, except that Robert was at the other end of the
line.

The drive seemed to have lasted half the night ere the lamps of
Elverslope made constellations in the valley, and the green and red
lights of the station loomed out on the hill. They drove into the circle
of gaslights, among the vaporous steeds of omnibuses and flies, and
entered the station, Phoebe's veil down, and Mervyn shading his dazzled
eyes from the glare. They were half an hour too soon; and while waiting,
it occurred to Phoebe to inquire whether a telegram for Beauchamp had
been received. Even so, and they must have crossed the express; but a
duplicate was brought to them.

'Safe. We shall be at Elverslope at 10.20, P.M.'

Assuredly Phoebe did not faint, for she stood on her feet; and Mervyn
never perceived the suspension of senses, which lasted till she found him
for the second time asking whether she would go home or await the
travellers at Elverslope.

'Home,' she said, instinctively, in her relief forgetting all the
distress of what had taken place, so that her sensations were little
short of felicity; and as she heard the 8.30 train roaring up, she shed
tears of joy at having no concern therewith. The darkness and Mervyn's
silence were comfortable, for she could wipe unseen her showers of tears
at each gust of thankfulness that passed over her; and it was long before
she could command her voice even to ask her companion whether he were
tired. 'No,' he said; but the tone was more than half-sullen; and at the
thought of the meeting between the brothers, poor Phoebe's heart seemed
to die within her. Against their dark looks and curt sayings to one
another she had no courage.

When they reached home, she begged him to go at once to bed, hoping thus
to defer the meeting; but he would not hear of doing so; and her only
good augury was that his looks were pale, languid, and subdued, rather
than flushed and excited. Miss Fennimore was in the hall, and he went
towards her, saying, in a friendly tone, 'So, Miss Fennimore, you have
heard that this unlucky child has given us a fright for nothing.'

The voice in which she assented was hoarse and scarcely audible, and she
looked as if twenty years had passe