, Di," she said, and went into the alcove, where she sat
down to rest. She had a little veil attached to her turban hat--a
little veil which she now drew over her face. The tears gathered slowly
in her eyes and fell through that flimsy morsel of lace with which she
would fain have hidden her childish sorrow. The tears gathered and fell
on her lap as she sat in silence, pretending not to cry. This much rain
at least was there to justify her prediction, uttered in such foolish
gaiety of heart half an hour before.

Miss Halliday's eyes were undimmed by tears? when she went back to the
gothic villa; but she had a feeling that some great sorrow had come
upon her--a vague idea that the last lingering warmth and brightness of
summer had faded all in a moment, and that chill gray winter had closed
in upon Bayswater without any autumnal interval. What was it that she
had lost? Only the occasional society of a young man with a handsome
pale face, a little haggard and wan from the effect of dissipated
habits and a previous acquaintance with care and difficulty--only the
society of a penniless Bohemian who had a certain disreputable
cleverness and a dash of gloomy sentimentality, which the schoolgirl
mistook for genius. But then he was the first man whose eyes had ever
softened with a mysterious tenderness as they looked at her--the first
whose voice had grown faintly tremulous when it syllabled her name.

There was some allusion to Mr. Hawkehurst's departure in the course of
dinner, and Philip Sheldon expressed some surprise.

"Going to leave town?" he said.

"Yes, papa," Charlotte answered; "he is going a long way into the
country,--a hundred and fifty miles, he said."

"Did he tell you where he was going?"

"No; he seemed unwilling to mention the place. He only said something
about a hundred and fifty miles."

CHAPTER IX.

MR. SHELDON ON THE WATCH.

Mr. Sheldon had occasion to see Captain Paget early the following day,
and questioned him closely about his _protege's_ movements. He had
found Valentine a very useful tool in sundry intricate transactions of
the commercial kind, and he expected his tools to be ready for his
service. He was therefore considerably annoyed by Valentine's abrupt
departure.

"I think young Hawkehurst might have told me he was going out of town,"
he said. "What the deuce has taken him off in such a hurry?"

"He is going to see some mysterious old aunt at Dorking, from whom he
seems t