“Oh that I could make the experiment with you!”

“You will be my inspiration and encouragement, and come to me in due time.”

He came round to her, and she let him give her his first kiss.

“God will help us,” she said reverently; “it is the cause of uprightness and deliverance from cruel bondage.”

The plans had been settled; Gerald had arranged with a cab which was to take him and his sister to a house five miles out in the country, of which Miss Hackett had given the name, so that they might seem to have been spending the evening with her.  Thence it was but a step to the station of a different railway from that which went through Silverton, and they would go by the mail train to London, where Ludmilla could be deposited at Mrs. Grinstead’s house at Brompton, where Martha could provide her with an outfit, while Gerald saw the editor of the ‘Censor’, got some money from the bank, telegraphed to Oxford for his baggage, and made ready to start the next morning for Liverpool, whither he had telegraphed to secure a second-class passage to New York for G. F. Wood and Lydia Wood, the names which he meant to be called by.

“The first name I knew,” he said, “the name of Tom Wood, is far more real to me or my father than Edgar Underwood ever could be.”

He promised that Dolores should have a telegram at Clipstone by the time she reached it, for she had to give her second lecture the next day, and was to return afterwards.  All this had been discussed over and over again, and there had been many quakings and declarations that the scheme had failed, and that neither girl could have had courage, nor perhaps adroitness, and that the poor prisoner had been re-captured.  Gerald had made more than one expedition into the little garden to listen, and had filled the house with cold air before he returned, sat down in a resigned fashion, and declared—-

“It is all up!  That comes of trusting to fools of girls.”

“Hark!”

He sprang up and out into the vestibule.  Miss Hackett opened the door into the back passage.  There stood the “red mantle” and Melinda Crachett.  Gerald took the trembling figure in his arms with a brotherly kiss.

“My little sister,” he said, “look to me,” then gave her to Dolores, who led her into the drawing-room, and put her into an arm-chair.

She could hardly stand, but tried to jump up as Miss Hackett entered.

“No, no, my poor child, she said, “sit still!  Rest.  Were you followed?”

“No; I don’t think they had missed me.”

She was so breathless that Miss Hackett would have given her a glass of wine, but she shook her head,

“Oh no, thank you!  I’ve kept the pledge.”