or hear of you again. I will give you money to leave London--to return
to Paris. Nevill will arrange it. Do you understand?"

He lifted her to her feet and pushed her from him. She staggered against
an easel on which was a completed picture in oils, and it fell with a
crash. Jack trampled over it ruthlessly, driving his feet through the
canvas.

"Go!" he cried.

And Diane, trembling with terror, went swiftly out into the black and
rainy night.

An hour later, when Victor Nevill came to say that his search had been
fruitless, he found Jack stretched full length on the couch, with his
face buried in a soft cushion.

CHAPTER XVII.

TWO PASSENGERS FROM CALAIS.

It was the 9th of November, Lord Mayor's Day, and in London the usual
clammy compound of fog and mist--was there ever a Lord Mayor's Day
without it?--hung like a shroud in the city streets, though it was
powerless to chill the ardor of the vast crowds who waited for the
procession to come by in all its pomp and pageantry.

At Dover the weather was as bad, but in a different way. Leaden clouds
went scudding from horizon to horizon, accentuating the chalky whiteness
of the cliffs, and reflecting their sombre hue on the gray waters. A
cold, raw wind swept through the old town, lashing the sea to
milk-crested waves. It was an ugly day for cross-Channel passages, but
the expectant onlookers sighted the black smoke of the _Calais-Douvres_
fully twenty minutes before she was due. The steamer's outline grew more
distinct. On she came, pitching and rolling, until knots of people could
be seen on the fore-deck.

The majority of the passengers, excepting a few Frenchmen and other
foreigners, were heartily glad to be at home again, after sojourns of
various lengths on the Continent. Two, in particular, could scarcely
restrain their impatience as they looked eagerly landward, though the
social gulf that separated them was as wide as the Channel itself. On
the upper deck, exposed to the buffeting of the wind, stood a short,
portly gentleman in a dark-blue suit and cape-coat; he had a soldierly
carriage, a ruddy complexion, and an iron-gray mustache. Sir Lucius
Chesney was in robust health again, and his liver had ceased to trouble
him. Norway had pulled him together, and a few months of aimless roaming
on the Continent had done the rest. He was anxious to get back to Priory
Court, among his pictures and hot-houses, his horses and cattle, and he
intended to go