true; you're going to Switzerland for your
honeymoon, you know), and let him think the Langtons are away
somewhere on the Continent. It's all for his good; he'll want mountain
air and a cheerful companion like me to put him right again. He'll be
the first to laugh at an innocent little deception like that.'

But Mark had done with deceptions, as he told himself. 'I shall tell
him what I think he ought to know,' he said firmly, and Caffyn, with
all his keenness, mistook the purpose in his mind.

'I'll take that for an answer,' he said, 'and I shan't leave town
to-morrow on the chance of his being able to go.' And so they parted.

'Ought I to have let him see that I knew?' Caffyn was thinking when he
was alone again. 'No, I don't want to frighten him. I think he will
play my game without it.'

Mark went back to the Langtons and dined there. Afterwards he told
Mabel privately that he would be obliged to leave town for a day or
two on pressing business. There was no mistaking his extreme
reluctance to go, and she understood that only the sternest necessity
took him away at such a time, trusting him too entirely to ask any
questions.

But as they parted she said, 'It's only for two days, Mark, isn't it?'

'Only for two days,' he answered.

'And soon we shall be together--you and I--for all our lives,' she
said softly, with a great happiness in her low tones. 'I ought to be
able to give you up for just two days, Mark!'

Before those two days were over, he thought, she might give him up for
ever! and the thought that this was possible made it difficult for him
to part as if all were well. He went back and passed a sleepless
night, thinking over the humiliating task he had set himself. His only
chance of keeping Mabel now lay in making a full confession to Holroyd
of his perfidy; he would offer a complete restitution in time. He
would plead so earnestly that his friend _must_ forgive him, or at
least consent to stay his hand for the present. He would humble
himself to any extent, if that would keep him from losing Mabel
altogether--anything but that. If he lost her now, the thought of the
happiness he had missed so narrowly would drive him mad.

It was a miserably cold day when he left Paddington, and he shivered
under his rug as he sat in the train. He could hardly bear the
cheerful talk of meeting or parting friends at the various stations at
which the train stopped. He would have welcomed a collision which
would