common-sense finger on the spot--on the very pulse of
Catsford and the neighborhood.

"What they'll want to hear about is the marriage. Any irregularity in
her position--!" He waved his hands expressively.

Graciousness and loyalty, charities continued and institutes
built--excellent in their way, but no real use if there were any
irregularity in her position! Cartmell was right--and I am far from
wishing to imply that Catsford was wrong, or that its pulse beat
otherwise than the pulse of a healthy locality should. The rules must be
kept--at any rate, homage must be paid to them. Jenny herself never
denied the obligation, whether it were to be regarded as merely social
or as something more. It is no business of mine to question it on her
behalf--and I feel no call to do it on my own account.

Cartmell's words flung a doubt. Was there much positive reason for that
doubt yet? People may get married without advertising the fact. Even
although they have departed by the same train for the same place, they
may behave with propriety pending arrangements for a wedding. Jenny had
great possessions; she was not to be married out of hand, like a
beggar-girl. Settlements clamored to be made, lawyers to be consulted.
Cartmell cut across these soothing reflections of mine.

"It's a funny thing that I've had no instructions about settlements.
She'd surely never marry him without settlements?"

I cut my reflections adrift, it was the only line left open to me. "How
could you expect a girl to think about them in such circumstances?"

"I should expect Jenny Driver to," he said.

"She'd be thinking of nothing except the romance of it."

"Is that the impression you get from her letter?"

"There are always two sides to her mind," I urged.

"One's in that letter," he said, pointing to it. "What's the other
doing, Austin?"

To ask that question was, as things stood, to cry to an oracle which was
dumb. Miss Driver of Breysgate spoke--but Jenny was obstinately mute.
Before many days were out, Catsford became one colossal "Why?" It must
have been by a supreme effort, by a heartrending sacrifice to
traditional decorum, that the editor of the _Herald and Times_ refrained
from writing articles or "opening our columns to a correspondence" on
the subject.

At last there came a word about herself--to me and to me only. It was
contained in the last communication I received from her before she left
London; she spoke of herself as being "j