she stood up in the carriage. Mr. Wendover did
the same; Laura saw that the lady and gentleman outside were now
standing near the door. 'What have you to say? It's my own business!'
she returned, between her teeth. 'Go out, go out, go out!'

'Do you suppose I would speak if I didn't care--do you suppose I would
care if I didn't love you?' the young man murmured, close to her face.

'What is there to care about? Because people will know it and talk? If
it's bad it's the right thing for me! If I don't go to her where else
shall I go?'

'Come to me, dearest, dearest!' Mr. Wendover went on. 'You are ill, you
are mad! I love you--I assure you I do!'

She pushed him away with her hands. 'If you follow me I will jump off
the boat!'

'Take your places, take your places!' cried the guard, on the platform.
Mr. Wendover had to slip out, the lady and gentleman were coming in.
Laura huddled herself into her corner again and presently the train drew
away.

Mr. Wendover did not get into another compartment; he went back that
evening to Queen's Gate. He knew how interested his old friend there, as
he now considered her, would be to hear what Laura had undertaken
(though, as he learned, on entering her drawing-room again, she had
already heard of it from her maid), and he felt the necessity to tell
her once more how her words of four days before had fructified in his
heart, what a strange, ineffaceable impression she had made upon him: to
tell her in short and to repeat it over and over, that he had taken the
most extraordinary fancy----! Lady Davenant was tremendously vexed at
the girl's perversity, but she counselled him patience, a long,
persistent patience. A week later she heard from Laura Wing, from
Antwerp, that she was sailing to America from that port--a letter
containing no mention whatever of Selina or of the reception she had
found at Brussels. To America Mr. Wendover followed his young compatriot
(that at least she had no right to forbid), and there, for the moment,
he has had a chance to practise the humble virtue recommended by Lady
Davenant. He knows she has no money and that she is staying with some
distant relatives in Virginia; a situation that he--perhaps too
superficially--figures as unspeakably dreary. He knows further that Lady
Davenant has sent her fifty pounds, and he himself has ideas of
transmitting funds, not directly to Virginia but by the roundabout road
of Queen's Gate. Now, however, that Lionel Ber