xcited. She lay in bed with a clear flush in
her white cheeks, and hardly smiled at all to the girl's greeting.

"Well, you have seen Mr. Phillips, then?" said Mabel.

Old Mrs. Brand looked at her sharply an instant, but said nothing.

"Don't excite yourself, mother. Oliver will be back to-night."

The old lady drew a long breath.

"Don't trouble about me, my dear," she said. "I shall do very well now.
He will be back to dinner, will he not?"

"If the volor is not late. Now, mother, are you ready for breakfast?"

* * * * *

Mabel passed an afternoon of considerable agitation. It was certain that
something had happened. The secretary, who breakfasted with her in the
parlour looking on to the garden, had appeared strangely excited. He had
told her that he would be away the rest of the day: Mr. Oliver had given
him his instructions. He had refrained from all discussion of the
Eastern question, and he had given her no news of the Paris Convention;
he only repeated that Mr. Oliver would be back that night. Then he had
gone of in a hurry half-an-hour later.

The old lady seemed asleep when the girl went up afterwards, and Mabel
did not like to disturb her. Neither did she like to leave the house; so
she walked by herself in the garden, thinking and hoping and fearing,
till the long shadow lay across the path, and the tumbled platform of
roofs was bathed in a dusty green haze from the west.

As she came in she took up the evening paper, but there was no news
there except to the effect that the Convention would close that
afternoon.

* * * * *

Twenty o'clock came, but there was no sign of Oliver. The Paris volor
should have arrived an hour before, but Mabel, staring out into the
darkening heavens had seen the stars come out like jewels one by one,
but no slender winged fish pass overhead. Of course she might have
missed it; there was no depending on its exact course; but she had seen
it a hundred times before, and wondered unreasonably why she had not
seen it now. But she would not sit down to dinner, and paced up and
down in her white dress, turning again and again to the window,
listening to the soft rush of the trains, the faint hoots from the
track, and the musical chords from the junction a mile away. The lights
were up by now, and the vast sweep of the towns looked like fairyland
between the earthly light and the heavenly darkness. Why did not Oliver
come, or at least let her know why he did not?

Once sh