at Dover, on the
last occasion, and whom she had then, with her recollection of previous
arrangements, fitted into a particular setting. Miss Dolman had figured
before and not figured since, but she was now the subject of an
imperative appeal. "Absolutely necessary to see you. Take last train
Victoria if you can catch it. If not, earliest morning, and answer me
direct either way."

"Reply paid?" said the girl. Mr. Buckton had just departed and the
counter-clerk was at the sounder. There was no other representative of
the public, and she had never yet, as it seemed to her, not even in the
street or in the Park, been so alone with him.

"Oh yes, reply paid, and as sharp as possible, please."

She affixed the stamps in a flash. "She'll catch the train!" she then
declared to him breathlessly, as if she could absolutely guarantee it.

"I don't know--I hope so. It's awfully important. So kind of you.
Awfully sharp, please." It was wonderfully innocent now, his oblivion of
all but his danger. Anything else that had ever passed between them was
utterly out of it. Well, she had wanted him to be impersonal!

There was less of the same need therefore, happily, for herself; yet she
only took time, before she flew to the sounder, to gasp at him: "You're
in trouble?"

"Horrid, horrid--there's a row!" But they parted, on it, in the next
breath; and as she dashed at the sounder, almost pushing, in her
violence, the counter-clerk off the stool, she caught the bang with
which, at Cocker's door, in his further precipitation, he closed the
apron of the cab into which he had leaped. As he rebounded to some other
precaution suggested by his alarm, his appeal to Miss Dolman flashed
straight away.

But she had not, on the morrow, been in the place five minutes before he
was with her again, still more discomposed and quite, now, as she said to
herself, like a frightened child coming to its mother. Her companions
were there, and she felt it to be remarkable how, in the presence of his
agitation, his mere scared exposed nature, she suddenly ceased to mind.
It came to her as it had never come to her before that with absolute
directness and assurance they might carry almost anything off. He had
nothing to send--she was sure he had been wiring all over--and yet his
business was evidently huge. There was nothing but that in his eyes--not
a glimmer of reference or memory. He was almost haggard with anxiety and
had clearly no