ly,' he replied bitterly; 'plantation life has
unsettled me, you see. I shall have to go back to it.'

'To Ceylon!' cried Mark, with hopes that had grown quite suddenly. Was
it, could it be possible that the threatened storm was going to pass
away--not for a time, but altogether?

'Anywhere,' said Holroyd! 'what does it matter?'

'There's a man I know,' observed Caffyn, 'who's going out to a coffee
estate somewhere in Southern India, the Annamalli Hills, I think he
said; he was wanting some one with a little experience to go out with
him the other day. He's a rattling good fellow too--Gilroy, his name
is. I don't know if you'd care to meet him. You might think it good
enough to join him, at all events for a trial.'

'Yes,' said Holroyd, listlessly, 'I may as well see him.'

'Well,' said Caffyn, 'he's at Liverpool just now, I believe. I can
write to him and tell him about you, and ask him to come over and meet
us somewhere, and then you could settle all about it, you know, if you
liked the look of him.'

'It's very good of you to take all this trouble,' said Vincent
gratefully.

'Bosh!' said Caffyn, using that modern form for polite repudiation of
gratitude--'no trouble at all; looks rather as if I wanted to get rid
of you, don't you know--Gilroy's going out so very soon.'

'Is he?' said Vincent. He had no suspicions; Mabel's engagement seemed
only too probable, and he knew that he had never had any claim upon
her; but for all that, he had no intention of taking the fact entirely
upon trust; he would not leave England till he had seen her and
learned from her own lips that he must give up hope for ever; after
that the sooner he went the better.

'You needn't go out with him unless you want to--you might join him
later there; but of course you wouldn't take anything for granted,
nothing. Still, if you _did_ care to go out at once, I suppose you've
nothing in the way of preparations to hinder you, eh?'

'No,' said Vincent; 'it would only be transferring my trunks from one
ship to another; but I--I don't feel well enough to go out just yet.'

'Of course not,' said Caffyn; 'you must have a week or two of mountain
air first, then you'll be ready to go anywhere; but I must have you at
Wastwater,' he added, with a laughing look of intelligence at Mark,
whose soul rose against all this duplicity--and subsided again.

How wonderfully everything was working out! Unless some fatality
interposed between then and the ne