instant there was a swish, as if the skirts of heaven were trailing
across the earth, and the rain came down. He hastily thrust Miss
Tancred's arms into the sleeves of her mackintosh and wriggled into
his own. The final speeches were short and to the point.

"Mr. Durant," said Miss Chatterton, "you are a hero."

"Frida," said the Colonel, "you are a fool." And for once Durant
was inclined to agree with him. The more so as Miss Tancred took
advantage of his engagement with his mackintosh to enthrone herself
on the driver's high seat. She said good-by to the Colonel, and
gathered up the reins; Miss Chatterton climbed up beside her; Polly
gave a frantic plunge and a dash forward; and the hero was obliged
to enter the dogcart after the deft fashion of a footman, with a run
and a flying leap into the back seat.

Miss Chatterton was unkind enough to laugh. "Well done!" said she.
"Sit tight, and try to look as chivalrous as I'm sure you feel."

But it is hard to look or feel chivalrous sitting on a back seat in
a wet mackintosh with a thunderstorm pouring down your neck and into
your ears, and a woman, possessed by all the devils, driving
furiously to an express train that she can never catch. In that
lunatic escape from Coton Manor she had not looked back once; she
left Durant to contemplate a certain absurd little figure that stood
under an immense Doris portico, regarding the face of the sky.

The main thoroughfare of Whithorn-in-Arden was scored like the bed
of a torrent, and fringed with an ochreish scum tossed up from the
churning loam. The church clock struck three as they dashed through.

"You'll never do it," said Durant; "it's a good twenty minutes from
here."

"In the brougham it is. Polly will do it in ten--with me driving
her."

She did it in seven. Durant had pictured the two ladies scurrying
along the platform, and himself, a dismal figure, aiding their
unlovely efforts to board a departing train; as it was, the three
minutes saved allowed Frida to achieve her flight with dignity.

For two out of those three minutes he stood outside their carriage
window, beyond the shelter of the station roof, with the rain from
the ornamental woodwork overflowing on to his innocent head. He was
trying to smile.

"Heroic," murmured Miss Chatterton; and her eyebrows intimated that
she saw pathos in his appearance. As for Frida, her good-by was so
curt and cold that Durant, who had suffered many things in redeeming