ur carriage
quickly. _Lucille_--Don't ... _Here_ ...! Not _here_.... People are
looking ... _You ...!_ A common soldier.... Let me go. Quick.... Your
carriage.... Some one may--"

"Let you _go_, darling ...! Now I have found you.... If you say
another word I'll serve you as you served the Haddock. I'll hang on to
your arm right along the Leas. I'll hang round your neck and scream if
you try to run away. This is poetic justice, darling. Now you know how
our Haddock felt. _No_--I _won't_ leave go of your sleeve. Where shall
we go, dearest darling Dammy. Dare you drive up and down the Front
with me in Amelia Harringport's sister's young man's mother's
victoria? oh, my _darling_ Dam...." and Lucille burst into happy
tears.

"Go up that winding path and I'll follow in a minute. There will be
secluded seats."

"And you'll bolt directly I leave go of you?... I--"

"No, darling, God knows I should if I were a man, but I can't, _I
can't_. Oh, Lucille!"

"Stay here," cried the utterly fearless, unashamed girl to the
unspeakably astounded coachman of the mother of the minor Canon who
had the felicity of being Amelia Harringport's sister's young man, and
she strode up the pathway that wound, tree-shaded, along the front of
the gently sloping cliff.

In the utter privacy of a small seat-enclosing, bush-hidden half-cave,
Damocles de Warrenne crushed Lucille to his breast as she again flung
her arms around his neck.

"Oh, Lucille, how _could_ you expose yourself to scandal like that; I
ought to be hung for not taking to my heels as you came, but I could
not believe my eyes, I thought I was going mad again," and he
shivered.

"What should I have cared if every soul in the world who knows me had
arranged himself and herself in rows and ranks to get a good view? I'd
have done the same if Grumper had been beside me in the carriage. What
is the rest of the World to me, beside _you_, darling?... Oh, your
_poor_ hair, and what is that horrid scar, my dearest? And you are a
'2 Q.G.' are you, and how soon may you marry? I'm going to disappear
from Monksmead, now, just like you did, darling, and I'm coming here
and I'm going to be a soldier's wife. Can I live with you in your
house in barracks, Dammy, or must I live outside, and you come home
directly your drill and things are finished?"

Dam groaned aloud in hopeless bitterness of soul.

"Lucille--listen," said he. "I earn one-and tuppence a day. I may not
marry. If you were a f