away with me. If you can be ready."

"Yes, Dick, I can be ready. I am ready, whenever you please."

He pressed her arm, which she had placed within his, with a look that
said everything there was to say. But Minnie replied with a scream.
"Take her away! What right have you to take her away? Eustace will never
consent, and my mother--oh, even my mother will not hear of that. If you
were a hundred times divorced,--which it is a shame to think of,--you
can't take her away like that; you will have to be married again."

"I am sorry to push past you, Mrs. Thynne. It is your husband's fault,
who stopped my entrance in the natural way. But we have no time to
lose." He looked back, waving his hand to Minnie, whose wrath took away
the little breath she had left. "I am not a divorced man," he said.
Mrs. Eustace looked after them with feelings indescribable. They went
hurrying along, the two figures melting into one, swift, straight,
carried as by a wind of triumph. What did he mean? It was horrible to
Minnie that she could not go so fast, that she had to wait and take
breath. With a pang of angry disappointment she felt at once that they
were on the winning side, and that they must inevitably reach the Warren
before she could, and that thus she would not hear what Dick had to say.
It may here be added that Minnie had, like Chatty, the most perfect
confidence that all was right. She no more believed that Dick would
have been there had the end of his mission been unsatisfactory than
she believed that night was day. She would not have owned this for the
world, and she was vexed and mortified by the conviction, but yet at the
bottom of her heart, being not at all so bad as she wished to believe
she was, felt a sense of consolation and relief, which made it at once
easier and more tantalising to have to wait.

Foolish Chatty held Dick's arm fast, and kept up a murmur of happiness.
"Oh, Dick, are you sure it is you? Have you come at last? Are you well
now? And I that could not go to you, that did not know, that had no one
to ask! Oh, Dick, didn't you want me when you were ill? Oh, Dick! oh,
Dick!" After all, his mere name was the most satisfactory thing to say.
And as he hurried her along, almost flying over the woodland path, Chatty
too was soon out of breath, and ended in a blissful incapacity to say or
do anything except to be carried along with him in his eager progress
towards the tribunal which he had to face.

Eustace Thynne