oment with it in his
hand looking down at Christine's married name, "Mrs. James Challoner."

Poor little Mrs. Jimmy! A wife, and yet no wife. Sangster lifted the
envelope to his lips, and hurriedly kissed the name before he thrust
the envelope into his pocket, and went out to post it.

Would she come, he wondered? he asked himself the question anxiously
before he dropped the letter into the box. Somehow deep down in his
heart he did not think that she would.

CHAPTER XVIII

KETTERING HEARS SOMETHING

"I shall never be able to manage it if I live to be a hundred," said
Christine despairingly.

She leaned back in the padded seat of Kettering's big car and looked up
into his face with laughing eyes.

She had been trying to drive; she had driven the car at snail's pace
the length of the drive leading from Upton House, and tried to turn out
of the open carriage gate into the road.

"If you hadn't been here we should have gone into the wall, shouldn't
we?" she demanded.

Kettering laughed.

"I'm very much afraid we should," he said. "But that's nothing. I did
all manner of weird things when I first started to drive. Take the
wheel again and have another try."

But Christine refused.

"I might smash the car, and that would be awful. You'd never forgive
me."

"Should I not!" His grave eyes searched her pretty face. "I don't
think you need be very alarmed about that," he said. "However, if you
insist----" He changed places with her and took the wheel himself.

It was early morning, and fresh and sunny. Christine was flushed and
smiling, for the moment at least there were no shadows in her eyes; she
looked more like the girl who had smiled up from the stalls in the
theatre to where Jimmy Challoner sat alone in his box that night of
their meeting.

Jimmy had never once been mentioned between herself and this man since
that first afternoon. Save for the fact that Kettering called her
"Mrs. Challoner," Christine might have been unmarried.

"Gladys will think we have run away," she told him presently with a
little laugh. "I told her we should be only half an hour."

"Have we been longer?" he asked surprised.

Christine looked at her watch.

"Nearly an hour," she said. "We were muddling about in the drive for
ever so long, you know; and I really think we ought to go back."

"If you really think so----" He turned the car reluctantly. "I
suppose you wouldn't care for a little run after l