’You solemnly promise?  You will never cease to give me all the aid in your power until the thing is done?’

‘I do solemnly promise—­on the conditions named.’

’Very good.  You will have ensured my fulfilment of my promise before I can ensure yours; but I take your word.’

‘You will marry me on Friday!  Give me your hand upon it.’

She gave him her hand.

‘Is it a covenant?’ he asked.

‘It is,’ said she.

Lord Mountclere warmed from surface to centre as if he had drunk of hippocras, and, after holding her hand for some moments, raised it gently to his lips.

‘Two days and you are mine,’ he said.

‘That I believe I never shall be.’

‘Never shall be?  Why, darling?’

’I don’t know.  Some catastrophe will prevent it.  I shall be dead perhaps.’

’You distress me.  Ah,—­you meant me—­you meant that I should be dead, because you think I am old!  But that is a mistake—­I am not very old!’

‘I thought only of myself—­nothing of you.’

‘Yes, I know.  Dearest, it is dismal and chilling here—­let us go.’

Ethelberta mechanically moved with him, and felt there was no retreating now.  In the meantime the young ladykin whom the solemn vowing concerned had lingered round the choir screen, as if fearing to enter, yet loth to go away.  The service terminated, the heavy books were closed, doors were opened, and the feet of the few persons who had attended evensong began pattering down the paved alleys.  Not wishing Picotee to know that the object of her secret excursion had been discovered, Ethelberta now stepped out of the west doorway with the viscount before Picotee had emerged from the other; and they walked along the path together until she overtook them.

‘I fear it becomes necessary for me to stay in Melchester to-night,’ said Lord Mountclere.  ’I have a few matters to attend to here, as the result of our arrangements.  But I will first accompany you as far as Anglebury, and see you safely into a carriage there that shall take you home.  To-morrow I will drive to Knollsea, when we will make the final preparations.’

Ethelberta would not have him go so far and back again, merely to attend upon her; hence they parted at the railway, with due and correct tenderness; and when the train had gone, Lord Mountclere returned into the town on the special business he had mentioned, for which there remained only the present evening and the following morning, if he were to call upon her in the afternoon of the next day—­the day before the wedding—­now so recklessly hastened on his part, and so coolly assented to on hers.

By the time that the two young people had started it was nearly dark.  Some portions of the railway stretched through little copses and plantations where, the leaf-shedding season being now at its height, red and golden patches of fallen foliage lay on either side of the rails; and as the travellers passed, all these death-stricken bodies boiled up in the whirlwind created by the velocity, and were sent flying right and left of them in myriads, a clean-fanned track being left behind.