quick train, and went straight through to London without
stopping. After arriving at Waterloo station, therefore, we were obliged
to wait for nearly an hour before we could get another which would take
us to Haslemere.

A curious feeling that I had passed through all this before came over
me, and as we stepped out of our carriage on the platform of the
Haslemere station it seemed but yesterday that I had arrived at the same
place, intent on bidding Karine that farewell which never had been
spoken.

The time of day gave me the only sense of difference. We had left the
ship early in the morning, had made our first journey in two hours, and
now it was only very little past noon.

I had wished (considering the reception I had met at Sir Walter
Tressidy's on my first and last visit at his country house) to remain at
an hotel in Haslemere, there to await such news as Cunningham might have
to bring. For Karine's sake, I thought, it would be better for me not to
appear openly in the matter, unless it proved that the influence of her
brother and his narrative were not as potent in their effect as I
anticipated. Should he require any attestations from me, I was only too
glad to be on the spot and to be called upon to give them.

Cunningham, however, had overruled this programme of mine. No one could
tell, he said, how he might be received. He might be sorely in need of
me to back him up--perhaps even to prove the truth of his otherwise
unsupported assertions.

The Tressidys, he alleged, were peculiar. Though his sister had not
confided in him, he knew that she was unhappy with them. They had very
little money of their own on which to keep up the appearance they wished
to make in the eyes of their world, and Cunningham did not believe that
Lady Tressidy would be above accepting a heavy bribe from Wildred for
furthering his suit, by almost any means, with poor Karine.

Half against my will, therefore, yet not wholly with reluctance, I must
confess, I entered the carriage which was to drive us both to the house
where a few weeks ago I had been so ruthlessly repulsed.

"Thank heaven!" I said, as we rattled up the hill (perhaps in the same
vehicle which had driven me before), "that the storm wasn't just a
degree more severe in crossing. It was touch and go with us one day, at
all events, I believe; but a fraction worse, and we shouldn't have been
here now to stand between Miss Cunningham and that villain. A week or
ten days mo