e Mark Gifford. He
was nothing if not careful and precise with regard to everything of a
business kind.

Then she began asking herself the sort of rather futile questions people
do ask themselves, when puzzled, and made uneasy by what seems an
inexplicable occurrence. How would Mark get to Darnaston by twelve
o'clock to-day? Surely he could only do so by starting before it was
light, and motoring the whole way from London?

She gazed at the words "very private." What did they portend? Quickly
she examined her conscience. No, she had done nothing--nothing which
could have brought her into contact, even slightly, with the law. Of
course, she was well aware that Mark had never forgotten, even over all
these years, the dreadful scrape into which she had got herself by going
to those gambling parties in the pleasant, quiet, Jermyn Street flat
where she and Varick had first become acquainted. But that had been a
sharp lesson, and one by which she had profited.

She next took a rapid mental survey of her family, all so much more
respectable and prosperous than herself. The only person among them
capable of getting into any real scrape was poor little Bubbles.

Bubbles was now practically well again. She had written out the
announcement which was to appear in the _Times_ and the _Morning Post_,
and had insisted on its being sent off.

Donnington had been somewhat perturbed by the thought of their
engagement being thus at once made public. But Bubbles had observed
cheerfully: "Once people know about it, I shan't be able to get out of
it, even if I want to!" To that Bill had said, sorely, that if she
wanted to give him the chuck she should of course do so, even on the
altar steps. Bubbles had laughed at that and exclaimed: "I only said it
to tease you, old thing! The real truth is that I want father to
understand that I really mean it--that's all. He reads the _Times_ right
through every day, and he'll think it true if he sees it there. As for
his tiresome widow, she'll see it in the _Morning Post_--and then she'll
believe it, too!"

Blanche Farrow told herself that this mysterious and extraordinary
message might have something to do with Bubbles; and as she got up, she
went on thinking with increasing unease of the unexpected assignation
which lay before her.

It was a comfort to feel that that disagreeable man, James Tapster, was
gone, and that the rest of the party, with the exception of herself and
Bubbles, were goin