not a bit the livelier for
that, you know. You're asked, too Juggins.' (Juggins was a name he had
for Dolly, whom he found pleasure in teasing, and who was not deeply
attached to him.)

'Would you like to go, Dolly, if mother says yes?' asked Mabel.

'Is Harold going?' said Dolly.

'Harold does not happen to be asked, my Juggins,' said that gentleman
blandly.

'Then we'll go, Mabel, and I shall take Frisk, because Uncle Anthony
hasn't seen him for a long time.'

Holroyd saw no use in staying longer. He went into the schoolroom to
see Colin, who was as sorry to say good-bye as the pile of
school-books in front of him allowed, and then he returned to take
leave of the others. The governess read in his face that her
well-meant services had been of no avail, and sighed compassionately
as she shook hands. Dolly nestled against him and cried a little, and
the cool Harold felt so strongly that he could afford to be generous
now, that he was genial and almost affectionate in his good wishes.

His face clouded, however, when Mabel said 'Don't ring, Ottilia. I
will go to the door with Vincent--it's the last time.' 'I wonder if
she cares about the fellow!' he thought uneasily.

'You won't forget to write to us as soon as you can, Vincent?' said
Mabel, as they stood in the hall together. 'We shall be thinking of
you so often, and wondering what you are doing, and how you are.'

The hall of a London house is perhaps hardly the place for
love-passages--there is something fatally ludicrous about a
declaration amongst the hats and umbrellas. In spite of a
consciousness of this, however, Vincent felt a passionate impulse
even then, at that eleventh hour, to tell Mabel something of what was
in his heart.

But he kept silence: a surer instinct warned him that he had delayed
too long to have any chance of success then. It was the fact that
Mabel had no suspicion of the real nature of his feelings, and he was
right in concluding as he did that to avow it then would come upon her
as a shock for which she was unprepared.

Fraeulein Mozer's inclination to a sentimental view of life, and
Caffyn's tendency to see a rival in every one, had quickened their
insight respectively; but Mabel herself, though girls are seldom the
last to discover such symptoms, had never thought of Vincent as a
possible lover, for which his own undemonstrative manner and
procrastination were chiefly to blame.

He had shrunk from betraying his feelings bef