tes of silence wherein he should have been
eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his
again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork,
watched to the end; and then, observing that _finale_, laughed--and with
the voice of Elizabeth Landor.

"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
understand, and I can't tell you."

She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture
she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly
with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all
right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She
laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
"It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
someone else; even though that property were a girl."

Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On
his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that
something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true
to his instincts, waited.

"You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl,
"even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to
do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to
you; not even as possibility."

Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light
came.

"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never
occur to me to do so."

More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of
Elizabeth Landor.

"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the
vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I
hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than
you; but now--now--" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap
the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a
sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"

More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to
fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled
with the reins impotently.

"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell
me what it is, won't you?"

"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?"
Still again the laugh; unm