up, too, and in the end the
police went through his papers, and found letters from--well, from her,
you know. From Bogota. South America, isn't it? He'd lived there ten
years, you know, growing something--beans, or coffee, or coffee-beans, or
something--I don't know what. He tried to say the marriage wasn't
binding, but the Colonel--wasn't it providential that the Colonel was
home on leave? Mamma could never have grappled with it! The Colonel was
sure it was, and so were the lawyers."

"What happened then?"

"The great thing was to keep it quiet. Now, wasn't it? And there was the
shell-shock--or so Eustace--Captain Cranster, I mean--said, anyhow. So,
on the Colonel's advice, Mamma squared the check business and--and they
gave him twenty-four hours to clear out. Papa--I call the Colonel Papa,
you know, though he's really my stepfather--used a little influence, I
think. Anyhow it was managed. I never saw him again, Mary."

"Poor dear! Was it very bad?"

"Yes! But--suppose we had been married! Mary, where should I have been?"

Mary Arkroyd left that problem alone. "Were you very fond of him?"
she asked.

"Awfully!" Cynthia turned up to her friend pretty blue eyes suffused in
tears. "It was the end of the world to me. That there could be such men!
I went to bed. Mamma could do nothing with me. Oh, well, she wrote to you
about all that."

"She told me you were in a pretty bad way."

"I was just desperate! Then one day--in bed--the thought of you came. It
seemed an absolute inspiration. I remembered the card you sent on my
last birthday--you've never forgotten my birthdays, though it's years
since we met--with your new address here--and your 'Doctor,' and all the
letters after your name! I thought it rather funny." A faint smile, the
first since Miss Walford's arrival at Inkston, probably the first since
Captain Eustace Cranster's shell-shock had wrought catastrophe--appeared
on her lips. "How I waited for your answer! You don't mind having me, do
you, dear? Mamma insisted on suggesting the P.G. arrangement. I was
afraid you'd shy at it."

"Not a bit! I should have liked to have you anyhow, but I can make you
much more comfortable with the P.G. money. And your maid too--she looks
as if she was accustomed to the best! By the way, need she be quite so
tearful? She's more tearful than you are yourself."

"Jeanne's very, very fond of me," Cynthia murmured reproachfully.

"Oh, well get her out of that," said Mary bri