Greatly daring, he bent down over her, and gathered her into his arms.

She clung to him convulsively; and, all at once, there came insistently
to Mark Gifford, George Herbert's beautiful saying: "There is an hour in
which a man may be happy all his life, can he but find it." Perhaps that
hour, that moment, had come to him now.

"Blanche," he whispered, "Blanche--darling! You didn't really mean what
you wrote yesterday? Don't you think the time has come when two such old
friends as you and I might--"

"--make fools of themselves?"

She looked up at him, and there came a quivering smile over her
disfigured face. "Yes, if you really wish it, Mark. I'll do just as you
like."

"D'you really mean that?" he asked.

And she said firmly: "Yes, Mark--I really do mean it." And he felt her
yielding--yielding in spirit as well as in body--in body as well as in
spirit.

"I suppose you couldn't come back with me to London, now?" he asked a
little shyly. "We could get the woman at the post office down there to
send up a letter to Bubbles, explaining that you had to go away
unexpectedly, and telling her to follow you to town to-day."

It was rather a wild proposal, and he was not surprised when he saw her
shake her head. "I can't do that," she said. "But oh, Mark, I wish I
could! Bubbles is in bed. There was an accident--it's too long to tell
you about it now. But, of course, I'll manage to get her away to-day."

And then the oppressive horror of it all suddenly came back to her.
"When did you say they were going to arrest Lionel?"

She uttered the words slowly, and with difficulty.

"They're going to arrest him to-morrow, Friday, in the early afternoon,"
he said in a low voice. "By God's mercy," he spoke simply, reverently,
"I got your letter in time, Blanche."

He looked at her anxiously. "I'm afraid even now you will have some
difficult hours to live through," and, as he saw her face change, "I
trust absolutely to your discretion," he said hesitatingly.

"Of course," she gave the assurance hurriedly. "Of course you can do
that, Mark."

Without looking at her, he went on:

"As a matter of fact, the house has been watched for some days. If he
tries to get away he will destroy the--the sporting chance I mentioned
just now."

"I must be going back," she said, getting up. "Several of the party
were, in any case, leaving this afternoon, and I must manage to get
everybody else away as well."

Her mind was in a whirl o