g off here by 'isself!"

"What a time you've been," said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its
contents into his pocket. "I was so infernally cold I had to take a little
walk. Got the handkerchief?"

In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the
handkerchief, and they turned back for the house.

"Now for a balloon," Mr Beveridge reflected.

Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning
there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through
the winter sunshine.

By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day
it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge
was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of
general admiration and envy. He traced "vines" and "Q's," and performed
wonderful feats on one leg all morning. At lunch he was in the best of
spirits, and was off again at once to the ice.

When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was
Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together
hand in hand.

"I knew you would come to-day," he remarked.

"How _could_ you have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to
come."

"It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come."

"Who have ever come?" she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said
something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same.

"Many things," he smiled, "including purses. Which reminds me that I am
eternally your debtor."

She blushed and said, "I hope you didn't mind."

"Not much," he answered, candidly. "In my present circumstances a
five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress."

The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to
change the subject.

"What beautiful ice!" she said.

"The question now is," he continued, paying no heed to this diversion,
"what am I to do next?"

"What do you mean?" she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she
was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project.

"The wall is high, there is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it
hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I
don't. The gates are always kept closed, and it isn't worth any one's
while to open them for L10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class
ticket up to town. What are we to do?"

"We?" she gasped.

"You and I," he exp