e Breton.

A pang shot through him that pierced to the very centre of life. He was
conscious of a prayer for help and a clear mind. But on his way to the
station he had rapidly thought out a plan on which to act should this
mad notion in his brain turn out to have any support in reality.

It had so much support that Julie Le Breton was there--in Paris--and not
at Bruges, as she had led the Duchess to suppose. And when she turned
her startled face upon him, his wild fancy became, for himself, a
certainty.

* * * * *

"Amiens! Cinq minutes d'arret."

Delafield got out and walked up and down the platform. He passed the
closed and darkened windows of the sleeping-car; and it seemed to his
abnormally quickened sense that he was beside her, bending over her, and
that he said to her:

"Courage! You are saved! Let us thank God!"

A boy from the refreshment-room came along, wheeling a barrow on which
were tea and coffee.

Delafield eagerly drank a cup of tea and put his hand into his pocket to
pay for it. He found there three francs and his ticket. After paying for
the tea he examined his purse. That contained an English half-crown.

So he had had with him just enough to get his own second-class ticket,
her first-class, and a sleeping-car. That was good fortune, seeing that
the bulk of his money, with his return ticket, was reposing in his
dressing-case at the Hotel du Rhin.

"En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plait!"

He settled himself once more in his corner, and the train rushed on.
This time it was the strange hour at the Gare du Nord which he lived
through again, her white face opposite to him in the refreshment-room,
the bewilderment and misery she had been so little able to conceal, her
spasmodic attempts at conversation, a few vague words about Lord
Lackington or the Duchess, and then pauses, when her great eyes, haggard
and weary, stared into vacancy, and he knew well enough that her
thoughts were with Warkworth, and that she was in fierce rebellion
against his presence there, and this action into which he had
forced her.

As for him, he perfectly understood the dilemma in which she stood.
Either she must accept the duty of returning to the death-bed of the old
man, her mother's father, or she must confess her appointment with
Warkworth.

Yet--suppose he had been mistaken? Well, the telegram from the Duchess
covered his whole action. Lord Lackington _was_ dying; and apart