moment?  So forth he went, into the white light of the fresh April morning; and presently he was rattling away westward, as well as the eastward-flowing current of the newly awakened town would allow.  But very much surprised was he, when he got to Mrs. Grey’s house, to find that Nina was not there.  She had gone out very early in the morning, the maid-servant told him; she had done so the last two or three days back—­without waiting for breakfast even.

“But where does she go?” he demanded, wondering.

“I don’t know, sir,” the girl said; so there was nothing for it but to walk leisurely away back to Piccadilly—­after all, Nina would be sure to make her appearance at the usual hour, which was about ten.

By the time he was nearing Lionel’s lodgings again, he had forgotten all about Nina; he was thinking that now, since Lionel seemed on a fair way to recovery, there might be a little more leisure for Francie and himself to talk over their own plans and prospects.  He was on the southern side of Piccadilly, and sometimes he glanced into the Green Park; when suddenly his eye was caught by a figure that somehow appeared familiar.  Was not that Miss Ross—­walking slowly along a pathway between the trees, her head bent down, though sometimes she turned and looked up towards the houses for but a second, as if she were asking some unspoken, pathetic question.  She was about opposite Lionel’s rooms, but some little way inside the Park, so that it was not probable she could be seen from the windows.  Well, Maurice walked back until he found a gate, entered, and went forward and overtook her.  In fact, she 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,