“Fine.  But it is of little consequence to me whether it be fine or wet.”

“Oh!  I was not thinking of you,” was the careless reply.  “I want it to be fine for our archery.”

“Good-bye,” he said, stooping to kiss her.  “Take care of yourself.”

“Lionel, mind, I shall have the ponies,” was her answer, given in a pouting, pretty, affected manner.

Lionel smiled, shook his head, took another kiss, and left her.  Oh, if he could but shield her from the tribulation that too surely seemed to be ominously looming!

The lightest and fleetest carriage he possessed had been made ready, and was waiting for him at the stables.  He got in there, and drove off with his groom, saying farewell to none, and taking nothing with him but an overcoat.  As he drove past Mrs. Duff’s shop, the remembrance of the bill came over him.  He had forwarded the money to her the previous night in his wife’s name.

He caught the train; was too soon for it; it was five minutes behind time.  If those who saw him depart could but have divined the errand he was bent on, what a commotion would have spread over Deerham!  If the handsome lady, seated opposite to him, the only other passenger in that compartment, could but have read the cause which rendered him so self-absorbed, so insensible to her attractions, she would have gazed at him with far more interest.

“Who is that gentleman?” she privately asked of the guard when she got the opportunity.

“Mr. Verner, of Verner’s Pride.”

He sat back on his seat, heeding nothing.  Had all the pretty women of the kingdom been ranged before him, in a row, they had been nothing to Mr. Verner then.  Had Lucy Tempest been there, he had been equally regardless of her.  If Frederick Massingbird were indeed in life, Verner’s Pride was no longer his.  But it was not of that he thought; it was of the calamity that would involve his wife.  A calamity which, to the refined, sensitive mind of Lionel Verner, was almost worse than death itself.

What would the journey bring forth for him?  Should he succeed in seeing Captain Cannonby?  He awaited the fiat with feverish heat; and wished the fast express engine would travel faster.

The terminus gained at last, a hansom took him to Dr. Cannonby’s.  It was half-past two o’clock.  He leaped out of the cab and rang, entering the hall when the door was opened.

“Can I see Dr. Cannonby?”

“The doctor’s just gone out, sir.  He will be home at five.”

It was a sort of checkmate, and Lionel stood looking at the servant—­as if the man could telegraph some impossible aerial message to his master to bring him back then.

“Is Captain Cannonby staying here?” was his next question.

“No, sir.  He was staying here, but he went away this morning.”

“He is home from Paris then?”

“He came back two or three days ago, sir,” replied the servant.