ding appeared from under Tom Tower.

He came up and spoke to the two men, and while he did so Bingham
observed Miss Scott suddenly appear and make straight for them, holding
something in her hand.

"Bravo! What a sprint," murmured Bingham, as Gwendolen reached them
rather breathless.

"Oh, Mr. Harding," she panted, "Lady Dashwood saw you coming and thought
you wouldn't know where she and Mrs. Potten were. Have you got the
Buckinghamshire collar?"

Bingham burst into subdued laughter.

"My wife sent me over with it," said Harding, who could not see anything
amusing in the incident. "She said Lady Dashwood had got Mrs. Potten
here. That's all right," and he gravely drew from his sleeve a piece of
mauve paper, carefully rolled up, on which was stitched the collar in
question.

"Here's the money," said Gwen, holding out a folded paper.

Harding took the paper.

"Thirty shillings," said Gwen. "Is that right?"

"Yes, thirty shillings," said Harding. "The price is marked on the
paper."

"Extraordinarily cheap at the price," remarked Bingham. "There is no
other collar equal to it in Buckinghamshire."

The Canon turned and walked off, wondering in his mind who the very
pretty, smartly dressed girl was. Harding unfolded the paper. It was a
pound note and inside was not one but two new ten-shilling notes--only
stuck together.

"You've given me too much, one pound and two tens," he said, and he
separated the two notes and gave one back to Gwen. "You're a bit too
generous, Miss Scott," he said.

Gwen took the note, dimpling and smiling and Harding wrote "paid" in
pencil on the mauve paper.

"Here's your receipt," he said, handing her the paper, "the collar and
all," and he turned away and went back to the sale room, with the money
in his pocket.

Meanwhile Gwendolen did not run, she walked back very deliberately. She
had the collar in one hand and the ten-shilling note in the other. She
heard the two men turn and walk towards the gate. The old gentleman with
a gown on, by which she meant the Canon, had disappeared. The quadrangle
was empty. Gwen was thinking, thinking.

It wasn't she who was generous, it was Mrs. Potten, at least not
generous but casual. She was probably casual because, although she was
supposed to be stingy, a ten-shilling note made really no difference to
her. It was too bad that some women had so much money and some so
little. It was especially unjust that an old plain woman like Mrs.
Potte