wind of it, you see, and has made a bolt," he said.

I hardly know if it was a relief or not to find that this was not the
case. One of the Mayors' newly-arrived cousins, who had seen the
bridegroom at Liverpool Street, had been entrusted with a note to the
bride which satisfactorily explained his absence.

I carried this note in to Daphne as she dressed for dinner. It was only
a hurried scrawl on a leaf torn from a memorandum book, and, having
read it, she passed it on to me.

"Four whole hours before he gets here!" she lamented. "Oh, Hannah!
could anything have been more truly unlucky?"

"Darling," the pencilled lines ran, "I find those beggars in Covent
Garden have not sent the carnations. I shall wait till the last
minute, and if not here must go after them. I dare not come to you
without the carnations! Have me met by the 9.30. Yours for ever,
and ever, and ever--JACK."

"My dear, four hours isn't much," I reminded her.

"Four hours is a lifetime," she said.

She stared, positively with tears in her eyes, at her pretty reflection
in the glass. "I don't know how I shall get through this evening," she
said.

I don't know how we all did; but it passed somehow, although it did not
pass gaily. Hugh was too young and honest to hide with any success the
care that harassed him; his glum face at the head of the dinner-table
was discouraging to the most persistent cheerfulness. Mrs Mavor did her
best, but she was ill at ease, and, as must have been patent to all,
strongly disinclined to talk of to-morrow's event. To Daphne,
disappointed of her lover's presence and support, the gathering of the
clans was an ordeal and an embarrassment.

Standing beside her when coffee was brought to her, I heard her ask of
the servant if the dog-cart was yet gone to meet Mr Marston. He
believed it was just upon the start, the man said.

"Let me know as soon as it goes, please," Daphne said, and presently
the footman came in again with the desired intelligence.

I suppose the poor child wanted to follow in fancy the dog-cart along
the silent roads and the dark lanes, beneath the starlit sky; to see it
arrive at the little wayside station in time for the rush and roar of
the train, dashing like a jewelled monster out of the desert of night;
dashing off again, its great ruby eyes shining in its tail, into the
blackness of space, having deposited the one precious item of its
freight on the platform.

A half-hour