re about her health, her
indisposition? But no! He came not. And, as he continued not to come,
she went downstairs again and proclaimed that she was better.

And then she learned that she had been worrying herself to no purpose
whatever. Mr Bittenger was leaving on the morrow, the morrow being
Christmas Eve. Stephen would drive him to Bursley in the morning. He
would go to the Five Towns Hotel to get his baggage, and catch the
Liverpool express at noon. He had booked a passage on the Saxonia,
which sailed at threethirty o'clock. Thus he would spend his Christmas
at sea; and, spending his Christmas at sea, he could not possibly kill
Stephen in the village of Sneyd on Christmas night.

Relief! And yet a certain vague regret in the superstitious little
heart! The little heart went to bed again. And Stephen and the stranger
stayed up talking very late--doubtless about the famous cure.

The leave-taking the next morning increased the vague regret. Mr
Bittenger was the possessor of an attractive individuality, and Vera
pondered upon its attractiveness far into the afternoon. How nicely Mr
Bittenger had thanked her for her gracious hospitality--with what
meaning he had charged the expression of his deep regret at leaving her!

After all, dreams WERE nonsense.

She was sitting in the bow-window of the drawing-room, precisely as she
had been sitting twenty-four hours previously, when whom should she
see, striding masculinely along the drive towards the house, but Mr
Bittenger?

This time she was much more perturbed even than she had been by the
revelation of Mr Bittenger's baldness.

After all--

She uprose, the blood having rushed to her head, and retreated she knew
not whither, blindly, without a purpose. And found herself in a little
morning-room which was scarcely ever used, at the end of the hall. She
had not shut the door. And Mr Bittenger, having been admitted by a
servant, caught sight of her, and breezily entered her retreat, clad in
his magnificent furs.

And as he doffed the furs, he gaily told her what had happened. Owing
to difficulties with the Cheswardine mare on the frosty, undulating
road between Sneyd and Bursley, and owing to delays with his baggage at
the Five Towns Hotel, he had just missed the Liverpool express, and,
therefore, the steamer also. He had returned to Stephen's manufactory.
Stephen had insisted that he should spend his Christmas with them. And,
in brief, there he was. He had walked f