heme.
She announced that painful recollections made Fordborough impossible as
a place of residence, that Lottie was looking ill, and that they both
required a thorough change. She dropped judiciously disagreeable remarks
about her stepson till Addie was up in arms, and said that her mother
and Lottie might go where they liked, but she should go to her aunt,
Miss Blake, till Oliver, who was on his way, came home. Then Mrs. Blake
shut up her house and went quietly off to Folkestone: Horace was to
start from Dover in rather more than a fortnight's time.

[Illustration: "DO YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT I HAVE SAID?"--Page 66.]

After that the course was clear. Horace found out that he was worse, and
must put off his departure for a week or ten days. Then, when the time
originally fixed arrived, he said that he was better and would start at
once. Naturally, Mrs. James was not ready, and he discovered that the
house was intolerable with her dressmakers and packing, that he must
break the journey somewhere, and that he might as well wait for her at
Dover. The morning after his arrival there he took the train to
Folkestone, met Lottie and her mother, went straight to the church, and
came back to Dover a lonely but triumphant bridegroom, while Mrs. Blake
and Mrs. Horace Thorne crossed at once to Boulogne.

It was necessary that Mrs. James should be enlightened, but Horace was
not alarmed: he knew that she had no choice but to make common cause
with him. Mrs. Blake, however, could hardly make up her mind what should
be done about Addie. She more than suspected that the tidings would be a
painful humiliation to her daughter. "We mustn't tell her," she said at
last to Lottie. "She might be spiteful: it wouldn't be safe."

"It will be quite safe," said Lottie. "Because of what we used to say
about Horace, you mean? But that is just what makes it safe. I know
Addie: she won't let any one say that she betrayed me because she wanted
Horace herself once. She _said_ she didn't, but I think there was
something in it; and if there was, she'd be torn in pieces sooner than
let any one say so."

There was a curious straightforwardness about Lottie, even while she
schemed and plotted. She calculated the effect of her sister's
tenderness for Horace as frankly and openly as one might reckon on a
tide or a train, and behaved as if the old saying, "All is fair in love
and war," were one of the Thirty-nine Articles.

She wrote her letter without diff