he seemed to
be simply going this way and that, hovering about the one spot, while
ever and anon a hopeless glance was cast on the unresponsive
house-fronts up there.

"Miss Ross!" he said.

She turned, quickly, and when she saw who it was, her face paled with
alarm. For a moment she could not speak. Her eyes questioned him--and
yet not eagerly; there was a terrible dread there as well.

"Why are you here?" he asked, in his surprise.

"I could not rest within doors--I wished to be nearer," she answered,
hurriedly; and then, fixing her eyes on him, she said, "Well? What is
it? What do they say?"

"Oh, but I have good news for you," said he; "such excellent news that I
went away down to Sloane Street, so that you could hear it without
delay. The crisis is over and everything going on satisfactorily."

She murmured something in her native tongue and turned away her face. He
waited a minute or two, until she brushed her handkerchief across her
eyes and raised her head somewhat.

"Come," said he, "we will go in now. I hear you have had no breakfast.
Do you want to be ill, too? Mrs. Jenkins will get you something. We
can't have two invalids on our hands."

She accompanied him, with the silent obedience she had shown all the way
through; she only said, in a low voice, as he opened the door for her,

"I wonder if Leo will ever know how kind you have been to every one?"

This was a happy day for that household, though their joy was subdued;
for a shadow of possibilities still hung over them. And perhaps it was
the knowledge that now there was every probability of the greater danger
being removed that caused a certain exaggeration of minor troubles and
brought them to the front. When Mangan begged his betrothed to go out
for a five-minutes' stroll in the Park before lunch, he found, after
all, that it was not his and her own affairs that claimed their chief
attention.

"I don't know what to do, Francie," he said, ruefully. "I'm in a regular
fix, and no mistake. Here is Nina--it seems more natural to call her
Nina, doesn't it?--well, she talks of going away to-morrow, now that
Linn is in a fair way to get better. She is quite aware that he does not
know she has been in London, or that he has seen her; and now she wishes
that he should never be told; and that she may get safely away again,
and matters be just as they were before. I don't quite understand her,
perhaps; she is very proud, for one thing, but she is very m