seen it, and when we get there can recognize everything we want to
see without need of guide to name it for us, so Minola Grey knew London.
It is no wonder now that her mind was in a perturbed condition. She was
going to leave the place in which so far all her life literally had been
passed. She was going to live in that other place which had for years
been her dream, her study, her self-appointed destiny. She was going to
pass away for ever from uncongenial and odious companionship, and to
live a life of sweet, proud, lonely independence.

The loneliness, however, was not to be literal and absolute. In all
romantic adventures there is companionship. The knight has his squire,
Rosalind has her Celia. Minola Grey was to have her companion in her
great enterprise. It had not indeed occurred to her to think about the
inconvenience or oddness of a girl living absolutely alone in London,
but the kindly destinies had provided her with a comrade. Having
lingered long in the park and turned back again and again for another
view of some favorite spot, having gathered many a leaf and flower for
remembrance, and having looked up many times with throbbing heart at the
white, trembling stars that would shine upon her soon in London, Miss
Grey at last made up her mind and passed resolutely out at the great
gate and went to seek this companion. She was glad to leave the park now
in any case, for in the fine evenings of summer and autumn it was the
custom of Keeton people to make it their promenade. All the engaged
couples of the place would soon be there under the trees. When a lad and
lass were seen to walk boldly and openly together of evenings in that
park, and to pass and repass their neighbors without effort at avoiding
such encounters, it was as well known that they were engaged as though
the fact had been proclaimed by the town-crier. A jury of Keeton folk
would have assumed a promise of marriage and proceeded to award damages
for its breach if it were proved that a young man had walked openly for
any three evenings in the park with a girl whom he afterward declined to
make his wife. Minola did not care to meet any of the joyous couples or
their friends, and even already the twitter of voices and the titter of
feminine laughter were beginning to make themselves heard among the
darkling paths and across the broad green lanes of the park.

From the gates of the park one passed, as has been said already, almost
directly into the