ed on, not to give the
situation away and lament even to him, her old friend. She plainly
intended to stand by the man she loved and never admit she had been
going to marry him until he himself gave her leave.

"The one woman with a soul," Cheiron muttered, and rubbed the mist away
which had gathered in his eyes.

He revolved the situation over and over. Halcyone must be made aware of
the accident, if she had not already read of it in the morning papers;
but she must not be allowed to do anything rash--and as he got thus far
in his meditations, a waiter knocked at the old-fashioned sitting-room
door, and Halcyone herself brushed past him into the room.

She was deadly pale, and for a moment did not speak.

Mrs. Anderton, it appeared, thinking she would be tired from her
unaccustomed journey, had suggested she should breakfast in bed, which
Halcyone, thankful to be alone, had gratefully agreed to; and when on
her breakfast tray which came up at eight o'clock she saw a daily paper,
she had eagerly opened it, and after searching the unfamiliar sheets for
the political news, her eye had caught the paragraph about John
Derringham's accident. In this particular journal the notice was merely
the brief one of the evening before, but it was enough to wring
Halcyone's heart.

She bounded from bed and got Priscilla to dress her in the shortest
possible time, and the faithful nurse, seeing that her beloved lamb was
in some deep distress, forbore to question her.

Nothing would have stopped Halcyone from going out, but she hoped to do
so unperceived.

"Look if the way is clear to the door," she implored Priscilla, "while I
put on my hat. I must go to the Professor at once--something dreadful
has happened."

So Priscilla went and contrived so that she got Halcyone out of the
front door while the servants were busy in the dining-room about the
breakfast. She hailed a passing hansom, and in this, to the poor child,
novel conveyance, she was whirled safely to Cheiron's little hotel in
Jermyn Street, and Priscilla returned to her room, to make believe that
her nursling was still sleeping.

"Halcyone! My child!" the Professor exclaimed, to gain time, and then he
decided to help her out, so he went on: "I am glad to see you, but am
very distressed at the news in the paper this morning about John
Derringham--you may have seen it--and I am sure will sympathize with
me."

Halcyone's piteous eyes thanked him.

"Yes, indeed," she