e woods. She looked her best in a smart walking-frock
of white tweed, and a red toque; for the tailor costume modifies where
the elaborate accentuates.

Her brilliant eyes melted as Brathland's name was mentioned; naturally
at once.

"What a dreadful--shocking thing!" she cried. "I do not realize it at
all. Poor dear, we were such friends--and I saw him only a few hours
before. Have you heard anything more?"

"Ormond ran off to town directly after breakfast--as if he were afraid
of being asked too many questions. I have an idea that he kept the cat
in the bag. I saw my cousin Zeal yesterday, and thought he looked as if
he had something besides his health on his mind."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Kaye, startled. "What else could it be?"

"Well, Bratty was rather a flasher," said Gwynne, innocently. "The
dinner may not have been at the Club at all, and there is a little
chorus-girl that engaged the fickle Bratty's affections for a time, and
proclaimed her desire for vengeance from the house-tops when he
transferred himself to a rival at the Adelphi. She is a Neapolitan, and
that sort may carry a stiletto even in prosaic old London. Or perhaps
poor Bratty was despatched with the carving-knife. No wonder he didn't
want his family. But whatever it was, he has paid the penalty himself,
poor chap, and no doubt the matter will be hushed up."

"How disgusting! I don't want to think of human slums on this heavenly
Sunday morning."

"Nor to be proposed to, I suppose?"

"I don't mind, Jack dear."

She looked girlish and very piquant. Jack took her hand. She did not
withdraw it, and they walked silently in the shadowed quiet of the wood.
His heart beat almost audibly. Never before had she given him such
definite encouragement. He could think of nothing to say that would not
sound banal to this woman of the ready tongue. But agitation unlocks
wayward fancies and sends them scurrying inopportunely across the very
foreground of the mind. The vagrant hope that she would not accept him
in an epigram restored his balance, and he turned to her with his
habitual air of confidence, albeit his eyes and mouth were restless.

"I want an answer to-day," he said, boldly. "And there is only one
answer I will take. I have let you play with me, as that seemed to be
your caprice, and I love caprice in a woman. But there is an end to
everything and I want to marry before Parliament meets."

"And you never thought I would not marry you?" she asked,