so in giving it. For if he had told Mary everything about his
miseries, Mary, reacting to these confidences, had told him in return
everything, or very nearly everything, about her own.

"Poor Mary!" He was very sorry for her. Still, she might have guessed
that Ivor wasn't precisely a monument of constancy.

"Well," she concluded, "one must put a good face on it." She wanted to
cry, but she wouldn't allow herself to be weak. There was a silence.

"Do you think," asked Denis hesitatingly--"do you really think that
she...that Gombauld..."

"I'm sure of it," Mary answered decisively. There was another long
pause.

"I don't know what to do about it," he said at last, utterly dejected.

"You'd better go away," advised Mary. "It's the safest thing, and the
most sensible."

"But I've arranged to stay here three weeks more."

"You must concoct an excuse."

"I suppose you're right."

"I know I am," said Mary, who was recovering all her firm
self-possession. "You can't go on like this, can you?"

"No, I can't go on like this," he echoed.

Immensely practical, Mary invented a plan of action. Startlingly, in the
darkness, the church clock struck three.

"You must go to bed at once," she said. "I'd no idea it was so late."

Denis clambered down the ladder, cautiously descended the creaking
stairs. His room was dark; the candle had long ago guttered to
extinction. He got into bed and fell asleep almost at once.

CHAPTER XXX.

Denis had been called, but in spite of the parted curtains he had
dropped off again into that drowsy, dozy state when sleep becomes a
sensual pleasure almost consciously savoured. In this condition he might
have remained for another hour if he had not been disturbed by a violent
rapping at the door.

"Come in," he mumbled, without opening his eyes. The latch clicked, a
hand seized him by the shoulder and he was rudely shaken.

"Get up, get up!"

His eyelids blinked painfully apart, and he saw Mary standing over him,
bright-faced and earnest.

"Get up!" she repeated. "You must go and send the telegram. Don't you
remember?"

"O Lord!" He threw off the bed-clothes; his tormentor retired.

Denis dressed as quickly as he could and ran up the road to the village
post office. Satisfaction glowed within him as he returned. He had sent
a long telegram, which would in a few hours evoke an answer ordering
him back to town at once--on urgent business. It was an act performed,
a decisive step