rk again to him so long
as one twig of it lived--the gap where he had come upon her standing
like a goddess of the morning with the glories of the dawn all about
her. And somewhere not far away, under this same heavenly blue sky,
was Margaret. And there was no sign or hint of Jeremiah Pixley in her
atmosphere--nor of Charles Svendt.

What could it possibly all mean?

Miss Penny--Hennie Penny! What a delightfully ludicrous name! And what
a delightful creature she was!--Miss Penny, unless he had been
dreaming, had said they had come to get away from things--and people!
Now what did she mean by that--if she really had said it and he had
not been dreaming?

Was it possible Margaret had come to get away from Jeremiah Pixley and
Charles Svendt? On the face of it, it seemed not impossible, for
Graeme's only wonder was that she could ever have borne with them so
long.

His brain was in a whirl. The eyes of his understanding were as the
eyes of one immured for thirty days in a dark cell and then dragged
suddenly into the full blaze of the sun. If he had just drunk a magnum
of champagne he could not have felt more elevated, and he would
certainly have felt very different. For his eye was clear as a jewel,
and his hand was steady as a rock, though his heart had not yet
settled to its beat and the red blood danced in his veins like fire.

"Jock, my lad," he said to himself, as he got the knot of his tie to
his liking at last,--"keep a grip of yourself and go steady. Such a
thing is enough to throw any man a bit off the rails. Ca' canny, my
lad, ca' canny!"

VI

"Meg, I rather like young men with rippled hair," said Miss Hennie
Penny, as they passed the Carrefour and strolled between the dewy
hedges towards La Tour, with larks by the dozen bursting their hearts
in the freshness of the morning above them.

"Do you, dear? I thought you scorned young men?"

"As a class, yes!--Especially the Cambridge variety. But not in
particular. I make an exception in this case."

"So good of you!" murmured Margaret in her best company manner.

"Why did you never tell me how nice he was?"

"Tell you how nice he was? I don't remember ever discussing him with
you in any shape or form whatever."

"Not to say discussed exactly, but you can't deny that you've
mentioned him occasionally."

"So I have William Shakespeare and Alfred Tennyson--"

"And Charles Pixley!"

"That's quite different--"

"You're right, my dear. This is a ho