chapel had escaped the ravages
of time. The ground around it had been laid out as a public garden, and
its great courtyard turned into a promenade, set out with flowerbeds. It
was a great place of resort for the townsfolk on summer evenings and on
Sundays, but Brent, coming to it in the middle of the afternoon, found
it deserted, save for a few nursemaids and children. He went wandering
around it and suddenly caught sight of Queenie Crood. She was sitting on
a rustic bench in an angle of the walls, a book in her hand; it needed
little of Brent's perception to convince him that the book was unread:
she was anxiously expecting him.

"Here I am!" he said, with an encouraging smile, as he sat down beside
her. "Punctual to the minute, you see!"

He looked closely at her. In the clearer light of day he saw that she
was not only a much prettier girl than he had fancied the night before,
but that she had more fire and character in her eyes and lips than he
had imagined. And though she glanced at him with evident shyness as he
came up, and the colour came into her cheeks as she gave him her hand,
he was quick to see that she was going to say whatever it was that was
in her mind. It was Brent's way to go straight to the point.

"You wanted to speak to me," he said, smiling again. "Fire away!--and
don't be afraid."

The girl threw her book aside, and turned to him with obvious candour.

"I won't!" she exclaimed. "I'm not a bit afraid--though I don't know
whatever you'll think of me, Mr. Brent, asking advice from a stranger in
this barefaced fashion!"

"I've had to seek advice from strangers more than once in my time," said
Brent, with a gentle laugh. "Go ahead!"

"It was knowing that you came from London," said Queenie. "You mightn't
think it but I never met anybody before who came from London. And--I
want to go to London. I will go!"

"Well," remarked Brent slowly, "if young people say they want to go to
London, and declare that they will go to London, why, in my experience
they end up by going. But, in your case, why not?"

The girl sat silent for a moment, staring straight in front of her at
the blue smoke that circled up from the quaint chimney stacks of the
town beneath the Castle. Her eyes grew dreamy.

"I want to go on the stage," she said at last. "That's it, Mr. Brent."

Brent turned and looked at her. Under his calm and critical inspection
she blushed, but as she blushed she shook her head.

"Perhaps you t