THE place was Euston Square Station, the Metropolitan terminal depot of the London and Northwestern Railway; the hour 8:15 P.M. when from time wellnigh immemorial the London limited express has started for Scotland; the individual a tall, broad-shouldered man of, perhaps, twenty-five years, and known to the world, if not as yet to fame, as Richard Dalrymple.

As the traveller hurriedly took his seat in the first-class carriage which he had given the guard a couple of half-crowns to reserve for his exclusive use, he looked out with some impatience on a whole landscape of good-byes.

There were convivial good-byes perceptible in the refreshment department, there were lovers’ good-byes “the world forgetting by the world forgot,” then there were the multitudinous good-byes of good-fellowship. The universal parting injunction to “mind and write soon” was drowned in the hearty laughter and loud badinage which somehow or other appear to be inseparable from this station, possibly as a sort of counterpoise to the somewhat different style of off-going from the northern and sadder end of the line where the ties of friendship or kinship are apt to be closer and farewells longer and more affecting.

As Richard Dalrymple looked out upon the scene he thanked his lucky stars that there was no one there to bid him good-bye, and lest even a passing acquaintance should recognize him he hurriedly drew the window curtains and retired into the seclusion of his carriage.

“Thank God,” he murmured to himself as the train moved out of the station, “I’m glad I’m off. It was safer to run away, she carries altogether too many guns for me.”

As if to divert his mind from painful thoughts, he glanced out into the night and watched for a while, after an absent-minded fashion, the wayside stations as they fled past in endless procession.

Then an inbound express dashed by apparently smashing all the crockery of the world as it went, and the shock so far dislocated his ideas as to induce him to leave the window.

“I suppose I may as well make myself comfortable,” he presently murmured to himself. “Barkirk is four hundred miles away and there is no change of carriages.”

Saying this, he exchanged his tall hat for the regulation travelling-cap used in those ante-Pullman days.

As he uncovered his head, his clear-cut profile crowned with a profusion of light brown curls, such as ladies love to toy with, shone white and clear against the dark blue of the carriage upholstery.

“A strikingly handsome man both as to feature and complexion,” all women vowed Richard Dalrymple at first sight—“and a manly-looking man, too,” they were prone to add when they saw his width of shoulder and length of limb, and noted the frank fearless look of the well-opened dark blue eyes.

And yet as he opened his cigar-case to while away with “a weed,” the tedium of the long hours, there was an air of anxiety perceptible on his brow and a worn look expressive of much turmoil and uncertainty of mind visible around his eyes, which, to all appearance, the joy he had expressed at his escape had not to any appreciable extent relieved.

As the dainty cigar-case of sweet-smelling Russia leather lay in his grasp a tender look came into his eyes, and opening the clasp, two lovely bunches of blue Scotch “forget-me-nots” lay before him worked in silk in marked relief on the soft lining of the case.

As he sat gazing at the small blue flowers a soft mist crept into his eyes and rose and rose until it blotted out both flowers and cigar-case and blurred the light blazing overhead.

Then from the innermost receptacle of his pocket-book he took a piece of soft tissue paper and extracted from it, with much tenderness, the half of a three-penny piece, which, after putting tenderly to his lips, he laid alongside the blue “forget-me-nots.”

“It is just three years ago,” he murmured to himself, “since Jeannie gave me these when I first left for London to try my hand at medicine there. I remember the very words of the old song which she repeated as she gave me the half of the broken coin:

And although I have never seen my darling since, I have been true to her in word and thought and deed.

“Yes, indeed, I have,” he repeated almost fiercely, as though someone had challenged his statement; and then, as if a twinge of remorse tortured him, he cried out, “Oh, forgive me, pet, if I have ever wavered, even for a moment; you know I have never loved anyone but you.”

The heavy tears dropped from his eyes, and fell on the blue “forget-me-nots;” and then, as if ashamed to show his womanishness even to the walls opposite, he looked out into the night, through which the express now plunged on its furious way, rocking under its sixty-miles-an-hour gait.

Richard Dalrymple was what is termed a good, square man, and under the strongest conceivable temptation to prove himself a renegade he was doing his utmost, and not by any means with eye-service only, to prove himself true to his little Scottish sweetheart.

The cause—not of his apostasy, for he was still true in word and deed, and yes, in thought too, to his fiancÉe—but of his anxiety, was, all unknown to him, seated in the adjoining carriage with a smile of mingled triumph and apprehension lighting up her splendid dark eyes.

When Richard Dalrymple had regained his composure and had lit his cigar, the lady in the next compartment, detecting the odor, smiled again.

“Make yourself at home, mon prince,” she murmured with a softer light in her brilliant eyes—“and good-night—a sweet good-night,” she added tenderly, throwing a mute kiss with both hands in the direction of the invisible smoker. “The woman who loves you will keep watch over you, aroon.”

CHAPTER II.

MISS Gwendoline Beattison, the lady who with her companion, an elderly Frenchwoman, occupied the adjoining compartment, was the daughter of General Beattison and of his wife, a Spanish lady of renowned beauty.

After acquiring great wealth in India, General Beattison—a Scotchman by birth—had returned to his native town, and there during the intervals of her visiting and education abroad his daughter had resided, and had made the acquaintance of Richard Dalrymple, the only son of Doctor Dalrymple, senior physician of the town.

When the younger Dalrymple had established a medical practice in the West-end of London it seemed only natural that the Beattisons, who generally spent from five to six months in the Metropolis each year, should patronize him, more especially as they knew him to be well trained in his profession, and well thought of among his brother practitioners.

Dalrymple was an attractive man, a good talker and possessed of a magnetism which drew other men to him. He was popular and was accordingly in demand and at no house was he more welcome than at the home of General Beattison.

But complications soon arose.

Mrs. Beattison had died while her daughter Gwendoline, an only child, was still in the nursery, and the latter’s education had largely devolved upon governesses at home and abroad, whom her naturally dominant will soon reduced to subjection.

The result was that by the time she was sixteen years of age, Miss Beattison was a law unto herself, and it might be added with some show of truth, to her father also.

She was now twenty-one years of age and all the talk of “London-town,” in her matchless beauty—the despair alike of painters and poets. From her mother she had inherited her black Castilian hair and glorious dark eyes, together with that magnetism of glance and capacity for arousing or manifesting passion which seems the heritage of Spain’s seductive daughters.

From her father’s side had sprung the height and stateliness which marked her carriage; and the unresting audacity of the warrior’s blood was readily visible when Miss Gwendoline entered the lists.

Courted by all, and the belle of the London season, Gwendoline was true to an early—but undisclosed—infatuation for Richard Dalrymple, and with scant courtesy she refused the best offers of the season “by the score,” bent upon securing the only being she had made up her mind she could love.

Richard, although by no means insensible to Miss Beattison’s charms, was true to his Scotch fiancÉe, and feeling the fair Gwendoline’s passion for him becoming more and more marked, and unable to see that he was holding his own satisfactorily, he deemed discretion the better part of valor and, as we have seen, fled.

Miss Beattison, who had fathomed his plans, determined to follow him, believing that only some mistaken notion of chivalry on his side kept them apart, and convinced in her own mind that they were made for each other, and wholly unwilling that both their lives should be ruined by a false delicacy on her part.

It will be seen that her views were very far indeed from being orthodox on the question of woman’s rights, so far as they relate to courtship, but as against this it may be said that no breath of suspicion had ever been raised against her fair fame, and that her determination in following Mr. Dalrymple was consistent with a hereditary obstinacy in legitimate pursuits, once she was satisfied as to what was the right thing for her to do.

As Richard Dalrymple finished his third cigar the train was nearing Rugby station, its first stopping place.

“The preacher was entirely right,” he muttered, as he threw away the end of his cigar; “‘fill a bushel full of wheat and there will be no room for chaff.’ I have not been thinking enough of Jeannie, or this thing would never have worried me.

“The dear little darling,” he suddenly burst out with a new accession of fervor, as he took a photograph from his pocket and kissed it again and again. “I will have a thousand copies of that photograph made, and I will put them everywhere in my house and study and in my pockets, so that people will say ‘what a model lover he is!’ and that will stimulate me to be still better than I am.”

He kept on talking for some time until he became conscious of an undue earnestness in his avowals. “Great Heavens!” he suddenly exclaimed, “I hope I am not protesting too much—Oh no, no—how can I talk like that when I am within eight hours of the sweetest lips in Christendom, all mine too—exclusively—unkissed, unreaped for three years and just, just (here hyperbole failed him)—just too sweet for anything.”

“Those lovely blue eyes, that rounded neck and that yellow hair, and those dear arms! O dear, I feel them now even after three long years.

“I hate dark eyes and black hair and all your over-ripe Southern beauty; I wonder I ever gave it a thought; it is so commonplace beside the charm of the ravishing blond.”

In his excitement he had risen to his feet and was pacing backwards and forwards in his carriage, thrusting his arms out forcibly in front of him, as if in an effort to throw off excitement.

In turning, his hand struck the frame of the window forcibly, and the photograph fell from his grasp underneath the seat.

As he stooped to recover it he saw a handkerchief alongside it. This he at first mistook for his own until the softness of its texture undeceived him.

Rising to his feet he held the handkerchief somewhat carelessly to the light with the air of one who had nothing better to do, to see if he could discover any initials upon it. As he did so he became conscious of a subtle perfume, and it moved him horribly, as some men die without being moved.

His knees gave way through the weakness and he sat down. There was, he felt, but one person in all England who used that dainty Oriental perfume. She had told him so, and that one was herself.

Lest there should be any doubt as to the identity of the handkerchief, there, too, was the monogram in gold and black on the corner, the initials G. B. subtly intertwined.

In silence Richard Dalrymple sat with whitening face looking at the delicate piece of cambric in his hands.

“My God!” he suddenly burst out, “What is the matter with me; it is all I can do to keep myself from kissing it!”

His hand shook as it held the piece of vagrant cambric, and when the train entered Rugby station a man in the depths of self-abasement knelt on the floor of Dalrymple’s compartment with his head buried in the cushions of the seat.

CHAPTER III.

WHILE the train was standing in the station at Rugby, and the majority of the male passengers were taking their last “night-caps” at the bar of the refreshment room, before composing themselves finally to sleep, a voice of somewhat uncertain fibre called to the guard as he passed the window of the carriage occupied by Richard Dalrymple.

“Guard, come here a minute. Can you tell me how that handkerchief got into this carriage?” and the speaker handed the dainty piece of cambric which he had found to the astonished guard.

Before the latter had time to frame a reply a shrill female voice from the next compartment called out, “Come here at once please, guard, quick!!”

The call was so urgent and the necessity of the caller apparently so desperate that, with a hasty “Excuse me, one moment, sir,” to Richard Dalrymple, the guard stepped to the door of the adjoining compartment.

“Come inside please, guard, I’ve crushed my finger in the window and can’t get it out.”

As soon as the guard had entered the carriage the lady who had called him—Miss Beattison’s companion—promptly placed herself in front of the door to prevent anyone from seeing inside, and then waved the guard toward her mistress.

“O, conductor, please tell me,” said the other with great eagerness, “what the gentleman in the next compartment found. I overheard part of your conversation but not all.”

“Well, miss, he found this handkerchief, and it seems to have startled him very considerably indeed.”

“O dear, dear, it is one of mine which I must have dropped in that place to-night. You will remember that you showed us into that compartment first of all, but I exchanged it for this one because it gave me a better view of the entrance gate, and enabled me to see who was going off by train.

“Now, guard, that gentleman next door is a friend of mine, but I would not for all the world he knew I was near him; he would certainly want to travel in the same carriage, and that would be quite a nuisance.

“Tell him the handkerchief must have been left there by one of a party of Northern visitors to London and must have escaped the cleaner’s notice.

“Be steady now and on no account let him suspect that I am in this carriage,” and a small golden coin changed hands.

When the guard returned to Dalrymple the latter questioned him as to what was wrong next door. “Lady jammed her hand in the window, sir.”

“Dear me, and did you raise the window and relieve her hand, poor thing.”

“Well, no, sir—come to reflect, hang me if I think I did “—this with evident shamefacedness.

“You are a funny fellow, guard. After being called to open a window and relieve a suffering damsel, you come away not only without taking off the pressure, but you forget all about it; get out of my way and I’ll attend to the suffering lady.”

“Hold on, sir—stop, I say, stop!” called out the guard resisting the other’s exit, “the lady’s hand is all right now, and besides I haven’t told you the worst, the lady is in a high fever and—and it looks like small-pox. I didn’t want to tell you at first,” he went on mendaciously, “but you have forced it out of me; please don’t say anything about it or I’ll get into trouble.”

“Great Heavens!” ejaculated the traveller; “what an awful calamity! I wish you would stand a little further off. Suppose,” he added under his breath, “I should carry the infection to Jeannie.”

Then he added aloud as the other was leaving, “You have not explained how that handkerchief came to be in this carriage.”

“Oh, that is a very simple matter, sir,” replied the other promptly with an “in for a penny in for a pound” air, “a party of ladies came up to London in this carriage on my last trip, and I suppose one of them dropped her handkerchief under the seat, by accident. The name on their trunks was Bertrand, and I heard one of the young ladies called Georgiana, and the initials being the same,” continued the guard giving full swing to his imagination, “I suppose the handkerchief belongs to her.”

“That sounds all right,” returned Dalrymple, giving a side glance at the piece of cambric as if he would have liked to have asked for it had he only known what excuse to make for his request.

Now as the lady in the adjoining carriage, anxious that our traveller should have a reminder of her, had with much and unwonted palpitation of heart, suggested to the conductor the propriety of returning the handkerchief to the finder, he had no particular difficulty in meeting the other’s unspoken request.

“I suppose you may as well place that handkerchief where you found it,” the guard remarked handing it to Dalrymple as he closed the door, “it is the usual way.”

“Well, I suppose so,” replied the other with affected indifference, receiving the precious article from his hands.

As the train sped on its way Dalrymple sat for a while with corrugated brow, then he suddenly muttered as he lit a last cigar before turning in for the night:

“That explanation might account for the initials, but how about the perfume? The coincidence is too striking. I don’t understand it, and I believe that small-pox scare next door is all a trumped-up affair. I wonder who the people are who curtain themselves so closely in there, and what they mean by fooling the guard so.”

He awoke once during the night to find himself with a photograph of his lady-love in one hand and the handkerchief in the other. This arrangement stung him to the heart, and he made as though he wanted to throw the handkerchief out of the window.

“But no!” he said to himself in time, “I might need it as a reminder that I must brace myself and drive all thoughts of Miss Beattison out of my mind.”

That this reasoning was faulty was more than proved by the rapid softening of the severe glance which he directed towards the fluffy piece of cambric, which, as if half afraid of some necromantic influence, he held gingerly between his finger and thumb.

“Guard,” he said, “I don’t believe that cock-and-bull story about small-pox in the next compartment, or that high old tale you told me about the lady crushing her hand—now who are these people next door and what little game are they dragging you into?”

“I don’t know anything more about them than I have told you,” returned the conductor somewhat curtly, “and I’ve got too many daft people bothering me all the time without hunting up fresh ones.”

Saying this he raised his silver whistle to his lips and blew a loud blast, at the same time waving his right arm up and down toward the engineer like a crazy semaphore; all of which was the signal to go ahead.

Dalrymple retired to his seat with a rather chagrined smile.

“Slightly personal, that remark,” he said as he recomposed himself for sleep, “but I suppose he is worried quite a good deal by queer people. This line seems to be haunted to-night.”

CHAPTER IV.

WHEN Dalrymple awoke again, dawn was breaking coldly and slowly among the mountains of the lake district.

When he put his head out of the window of his carriage, the fresh chilly air of the hills carried his memory back with a rush to his old Scotch days, and to the time of his courtship.

“Oh, my little pet,” he murmured, turning to the photograph in his hand, “it seems but yesterday since you and I plighted our troth to each other on just such a hillside as this one here. I remember the smell of the heather that day, and how I could hardly find you a place to sit down on in the soft velvety sward, because you said you never liked to crush the bonny blue-bells—and they were all around us; and the lark, I recollect, rose from our feet and soared aloft, and we said it was singing us a wedding march.

“And that big intrusive bumble-bee too, that would fly around our heads—we could not bear to hurt it, we were so happy ourselves, and I have never even killed a wasp since for the memory of the time. Ah! and I remember too, Jeannie, the touch of your dear little hand so plump and firm, and the look in your bonny blue eyes when I told you I loved you and asked you to marry me; you looked so beautiful and shy.

“I was the happiest man on earth till that day, and there never has anything come between us, until now.”

As he ended there was a sharp tone of anger in his last words, and rising quickly and with much energy he opened the window and threw from it with all his force the poor little piece of monogrammed cambric, which had been lying on the seat before him.

As this little incident culminated the train was slowing down to enter the small station where travellers to the Lakes break their journey, and a barefooted youngster who had run out to meet the train caught the feather-like handkerchief as it fluttered and eddied from the advancing train.

A lady sitting at the adjoining window which was open, heard the violent banging of the sash ahead and saw the handkerchief thrown forcibly out.

“Call to that boy instantly, madame, to give you that handkerchief.”

The speaker was Miss Beattison, and as she made way for her companion at the window the natural pallor of her face became almost ghastly as she placed her hand to her side.

“Oh! oh! OH!” she moaned, “at last he has broken my heart. Now indeed I know how much he hates and loathes me by his throwing my poor little handkerchief out of the window as if it was infected by the plague. Oh how he must despise me!” Here gentle nature came to the relief of the sad-eyed, heavy-hearted sleepless one, and she burst into a flood of passionate tears.

“Has the boy got the handkerchief?” she inquired through her sobs.

“Yes, mademoiselle, here he comes with it, running alongside the train.”

“Oh, take it from him quickly, dear,” the sobbing maiden faltered, “or I think I shall die of shame and mortification.”

“Boy, bring that handkerchief here, it belongs to me,” shouted a commanding voice from the carriage ahead—and at the sound of it the tears in Miss Beattison’s eyes stood still—a frozen cataract.

“The lady wants it, sir; she says it is hers,” protested the boy.

“Oh, madame, slay that boy,” said Miss Beattison in a fierce little whisper.

“The lady is mistaken, bring that handkerchief here at once.”

“But it is a lady’s handkerchief, sir,” urged the boy.

“Bring it here at once, you little devil, or I’ll break your neck.”

Coarse words these, and oh how impolite to the other claimants, and yet sweeter far to the straining ears of the offended one than the softest music!

But the boy was “dour” in the face of ugly words or threats, and he held out the handkerchief to the lady at the window.

“No, no, give it to the gentleman,” said madame, and after a moment’s hesitation the boy threw the handkerchief into the carriage where Dalrymple was standing.

Dalrymple endeavored to reward the boy by throwing him a shilling, but the threat was not forgotten and the boy who came of a fighting stock threw the coin back into the carriage.

Dalrymple saw with surprise a coin of large dimensions fall into the boy’s hands from the other window, and he lighted a matutinal cigar to try and cipher out the peculiar kind of lunatics there were imprisoned in that adjoining compartment.

As for the eventful handkerchief, as if he were ashamed of having had it brought back he let it lie where it fell.

Next door an unusual occurrence had already taken place. Rising to her feet and swaying to and fro in the excess of her emotion, and with her beautiful eyes swimming in happy tears, Gwendoline Beattison threw herself on the hard bosom (but not hard heart) of her old companion and friend, and murmured as she flung her arms around her neck, “Oh, it was all a mistake. He did not intend to throw away my handkerchief. Did you notice how furious he was, the darling, when he thought some one was going to take it, eh?” At which, by way of reply, the truthful companion groaned with much and genuine distress.

“I shall find out all about this mystery of the next compartment once I get to Carlisle station,” muttered Richard Dalrymple to himself. “We stop there fifteen minutes for breakfast, and it will be strange if I can’t find out what particular kind of asylum I have next door then.”

Saying this he relit his cigar and gave his eyes to the dreamy study of the Northern landscape, while his mind projected itself ahead to the meeting so soon to take place between himself and his sweetheart, from whom he had been parted for three long years.

But “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee,” especially when it is a woman’s wit which is the disturbing influence.

At the last station before entering Carlisle, Miss Beattison called the guard to her, and begged that he would find an empty carriage in the rear of the train (their carriage was now in front) for herself and companion, into which they could change the moment the gentleman in the adjoining compartment should leave it for his breakfast.

“But suppose he does not leave it?” gloomily queried the guard; “men who smoke so much in the early morning can easily wait for their breakfast until they get home.”

“Well, in that case,” responded the lady, “we will try some other plan, but this will do until we know it can’t be carried out; and at Carlisle we will keep our curtains closed until you give us warning to change, in case he should feel inclined to satisfy his curiosity about us.”

“By the way, guard,” resumed the lady, after a momentary pause, and with a little tremor in the voice, “did you happen to notice what he did with the handkerchief?”

“Yes, madam, it is lying on the seat in front of him and he is studying a photograph.”

“That is all, guard, thank you,” returned the lady in a fainter tone, as she leaned her head back on the cushioned partition.

“You look faint, mademoiselle,” said her companion, hastening to her side with an anxious look in her eyes—“will mademoiselle try a little sal-volatile?”

“Thank you, no,” replied her mistress; “I think it is only that I am a little faint after my long night’s travel.”

She sat in silence for a few minutes while the companion watched the pallid face, and the white lids and long dark lashes which hid the beautiful eyes.

There was a saddened droop in the beautiful mouth with its gracefully curved lips, as if Cupid’s bow had been bent just a little awry. And where, oh where, was that imperious look which was wont to be enthroned on that boldly rounded chin? The change was Love the humiliator’s work.

The silken scarf thrown over the shapely head had fallen aside and now showed the beautiful hair in all the graceful abandon consequent upon a night’s comfortless travel.

The dusky tresses with the wave of a wind-swept banderol in them grew low and luxurious over the broad white forehead, and curled upwards in wealthy profusion over the graceful head.

The beautiful and strongly marked eyebrows, the densely fringed lids and all the component parts of superlative beauty were there.

Men talk of alabaster loveliness, of faces pale and perfect as flawless marble, but these similes fell far short of Miss Beattison’s complexion, which was the despair of the rest of the sex. In her case these would have been dead illustrations of a living glorious beauty to which neither nature nor art could furnish an analogy or an expression.

Her beautiful eyes, now closed in heart-breaking reflections, like her other perfections defied descriptions and beggared eulogy!

Even Byron, grand-master in the art of portraying woman’s ravishing beauty, recorded his failure to describe the beauty of lovely eyes, and his words might well be appropriated for Miss Beattison:

Suddenly the dark eyes opened widely, and the taper fingers clenched in a paroxysm of emotion.

“Oh, why should I waste myself upon a man who does not care for me?” she cried out bitterly. “What have I done that Heaven should grant me power to love only one man when it makes that man despise me, and prefer an ignorant Scotch country girl, whose love as compared with mine is as the shallow sea-shell to the bottomless ocean.”

“Oh, mademoiselle, give him up—let us go back, he is not worthy of you; there are a thousand handsomer, cleverer men—distinguished men too—who would kneel at your feet to-morrow—yes, mademoiselle, and put proud coronets there too; and splendid men, too, ah! if the poor companion could but choose! there are some ravishing gentlemen who visit you, and think you that I would run after a country doctor and break my heart when all the great world would come to me? Ah, mon Dieu, no.”

“Hush, madame,” replied the other, “you do not know what you are talking about. I know—of course I know, and the thought drives me nearly crazy with rage against myself—that I am doing an indelicate and unmaidenly thing in following up Dr. Dalrymple. Oh, I have fought against this love on my knees—yes, on my bended knees—but I cannot help myself. I love him, I love him, I love him! Even when I wore short dresses he was, all unknown to him, the idol of my childhood. Yes, I used to dream about him and pray God to give me him for a dear husband when I grew up. I remember him as he used to come up the church aisle on Sundays, and as he passed our cross-pew I used to redden until I fancied all the people in the church knew about my love for him. And during the sermon I never recollected the text, or remembered what the old clergyman said, I was just thinking of Richard (that is what I called him in my mind) and longing to run my fingers through his bonny curly brown hair. And oh when his moustache began to grow, as soon as I noticed it I insisted on being put into long dresses so that I might, as it were, keep in step with him; and when I went abroad it was still the same all the years I was away; nothing ever took his boyish image out of my heart. I did not flirt and carry on like other girls, I just thought of him and waited, oh, so patiently! until my education should be completed, and I could return home practically my own mistress.

“Now, madame, do you think that love like that is going to stop because a thing seems unmaidenly, when all the happiness of my life is concerned in the result? Do you know that Dr. Dalrymple is now on his way to see his fiancÉe, and that this is the most crucial period of my whole life? Oh, if I were a man, and our positions reversed, I would carry him off!”

Madame was in despair—she held up her wrinkled hands and exclaimed again and again, “mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” and then her womanly heart coming to her aid, she took the beautiful head between her hands and kissed it again and again. “God is good,” she said, softly but hopefully, “maybe it will all come right yet.”

Large tears—the advance guard of grief’s thunder shower which indicates but does not relieve the pent-up passion—gathered slowly and fell from Miss Beattison’s eyes, and the white teeth tried hard to restrain the quivering lip. But the effort was in vain, the rising sob refused to be quelled, and unable any longer to restrain her emotion, Miss Beattison covered her face and sobbed out her very soul on her old companion’s sympathetic shoulder.

“Ah,” muttered the companion aside to herself, “if I were a man and had a knife I would kill you!” and she shook her clenched fist at the invisible traveller next door.

When Carlisle station was reached Dr. Dalrymple stepped quickly from his carriage, thinking to catch a glimpse of the inmates of the adjoining compartment.

The curtains, however, were closed, and no sign of life was visible.

“Asleep, I imagine,” soliloquized the Doctor, “well, I suppose I may as well have some breakfast,” saying which he sauntered in the direction of the first-class restaurant.

When he returned the window of the carriage next door was in the same condition. “Still asleep,” he murmured as he lit his cigar, and the train moved outward.

Dr. Dalrymple was in error, however, for the change of carriage had been effected while he was at breakfast and his whilom companions were now a dozen carriages to the rear.

At the next station, the first on Scotch soil, noticing the adjoining door open, Dr. Dalrymple inquired of the guard if the ladies were still inside the carriage. “No, sir, they left at Carlisle,” replied the guard, an answer literally correct and yet giving, and intended to give, the impression that the ladies had left the train at the station named.

“Well, well, I wonder who they were—something unique, I should say——”

“Yes, sir, quite so,” said the guard as he left the door, adding to himself, “I seem to have more than the average of unique people this trip.”

CHAPTER V.

WHEN Richard Dalrymple reached Barkirk he was considerably surprised to see General Beattison’s carriage awaiting the arrival of the train.

“Some visitor to the old general,” he surmised, adding under his breath with a long drawn sigh of uncertain meaning, “It really does look as if I was never to be allowed to forget that family.”

The visitor, whoever it was, was slow to alight, and Dr. Dalrymple’s hack drove off without his having cleared up the point.

The new arrival’s welcome to his native home, after so long an absence, was the heartiest conceivable, and so thoroughly was he taken possession of, that it looked as if only by some desperate subterfuge would he be able to tear himself away to call upon the object of his affections.

And here it should be told that the engagement between Richard Dalrymple and Miss Jeannie Farquharson has been maintained as a profound secret by request of the latter, in order not to antagonize a wealthy and cantankerous aunt, her sole remaining relative. This state of affairs had limited the correspondence between the two, as their letters had to pass through the hands of a third person, who, knowing how cruel the tender mercies of a gossiping Scotch town are, did not care to receive too many lest she should arouse curiosity and set too many tongues wagging at her own expense.

At last, under pretence of a visit to his old friend Miss Farquharson the elder, Richard Dalrymple stood in the drawing room of Laburnum Lodge awaiting with a beating heart the arrival of his fiancÉe. The servant had said Miss Farquharson was out but would return in a few minutes, and would he see Miss Jeannie?

Would he! The gods were at last propitious!

When the servant went upstairs to announce his arrival, he expected to hear, maybe, a little glad cry, and the instant rush of descending skirts.

But no, the house was still, and after a minute or two the servant returned to say Miss Jeannie would be down directly. For a moment the room seemed to grow chilly, but his face brightened and the temperature rose again when he reminded himself that no doubt she had heard of his arrival, and it was necessary for her still to dissemble her love before tattling servants.

Presently he heard the sound of a soft foot-fall on the stairs and the frou-frou of a lady’s dress gliding downward from step to step. His heart beat faster, the color slowly left his cheek, and a happy expectant light shone in his eyes.

Yes, there, at last, the queen of all his hopes and joys stood in the doorway, not indeed the Scotch lassie of his recollection and his dreams, but a vision of fair Northern loveliness whose very perfection chained to his side the arms he had raised to embrace her, and nailed his feet to the floor; so that the passionate embrace of welcome which he had so often rehearsed in his own mind, all miscarried.

“Miss Farquharson—Jeannie—my darling!” he exclaimed with a faltering voice regaining control of himself and stretching out, not his arms but his hand, “I scarcely know you, you have grown so beautiful—what, what have you done with my shy little Scotch lassie?” Then he laid his hands on her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes.

Yes, they at least were the same, they had not changed while he dreamed of them these three long years, but they were not wont to droop before his gaze then as now.

Then his arms stole softly around the lissom waist, and gently and almost reverentially he stooped his lips to hers.

“Oh, please, Dick, don’t,” suddenly exclaimed the young lady with a struggle, and a rapidly rising color in the clear brown cheek.

“Why, Jeannie dear, what is the matter?” queried her lover in a distressed tone. “Don’t you love me any longer, darling?”

“Oh no, it is not that, Dick dear,” with faltering voice; “but we have been parted so long, and I’ve hardly got accustomed to you yet, you seem so formidable to me now, remember you were hardly more than a boy when you left; and now you have grown so big and strong and manly-looking, it doesn’t seem at all the same thing to kiss you now.”

“Well, darling, if that is all, the strangeness will soon pass, but dear me! this seems a cool meeting for lovers.”

“Let us sit down, Dick, and talk things over,” replied Jeannie, taking his hand and leading him to the sofa.

But Miss Farquharson’s knock was heard at the door, and they had only time to hurriedly appoint a meeting for the following day at the lonely Granton Falls, when the elder lady entered the room.

Richard Dalrymple’s mind was ill at ease during the rest of the day, and he was glad when the evening came around and he could have a confidential chat with the special friend and mentor of his old school days—Alec Douglas.

He determined to unbosom himself to his former “chum,” and receive from him the sweet solace of his sympathy as in the days of yore, when he knew Alec to be as true as steel and the best secret-keeper in the world.

Richard explained at length to his friend his relations with Miss Jeannie Farquharson, but he was too much of a Bayard to allude to Miss Beattison’s infatuation and its effect upon himself and his actions.

Alec Douglas sat silent while his friend unbosomed himself. He interrupted by no comment, but that he listened attentively may be gathered from the fact that his cigar went out unnoticed, and presently fell from his lips altogether without awaking his consciousness to the fact.

As his silence remained unbroken even after the close of the other’s confidence, Dr. Dalrymple inquired what he thought of the situation. He fancied that the expression on his friend’s face lacked the old-time sympathy he was wont to express, and yet that failed to qualify his astonishment when the other rose to his feet and after the merest pretence of looking at his watch, announced that he must leave to keep an appointment with a client.

“About your inquiry, Dick, as to what I think of the situation I can’t say anything, but I consider that I am the last person you should ask such a question,” saying which he strode out into the night.

“Well, I’m——blest if I don’t think everyone has gone back on me since I left. My sweetheart is like an icicle and my old friend is as chilly as a Norway blizzard. I feel like Rip Van Winkle who outlived or outslept all his friendships.

“What did he mean, I wonder, about his being the last person in the world I ought to ask? Is he so proud of his legal reputation that he thinks it beneath him to give an opinion about a friend’s love troubles? I suppose that is it, but if it is, this wretched little town hardens the heart worse than much abused London does.”

CHAPTER VI.

RICHARD DALRYMPLE spent a restless night, and counted the minutes almost until it was time to meet his fiancÉe at Granton Falls.

He had some difficulty in evading his friends, but finally managed to be at the place of rendezvous some twenty minutes before the time fixed.

The place appointed was the corner of a stone bridge which spanned the Eildon river at Granton Falls, the said falls being simply a succession of small rapids.

As Richard looked over the bridge he noticed the footpath about fifty feet lower than the bridge, and said with some anxiety: “I hope Jeannie did not mean the footpath at the falls, for if she goes there while I am here I can’t get to her without breaking my neck over those rocks.”

At that instant the sharp ring of a horse’s hoofs on the hard granite road aroused his attention, and turning round slowly, to his utter bewilderment, he saw Miss Beattison, unattended by her groom, reining in her horse by his side.

“How do you do, Doctor Dalrymple? Will you please help me to dismount, I have something to say to you.”

Then she tied her horse to the nearest sapling, and came to his side; her face white and almost stern in its set expression.

“Are you wondering how I came to be here? Well I came by the same train as you did, to find out for myself whether the secret of your indifference to me was to be found here, in this little country town; and if it was the case, dear, as I had heard that you loved another, why, then, I determined I should end my most miserable life, for to me death is a thousand times better than life without you. Please do not think ill of me, for, as Heaven is my witness, this unrequited love is more than I can bear. This lonely walk what does it mean? Are you waiting now to keep some appointment?”

As Gwendoline Beattison stood before Richard Dalrymple in all the pride of her splendid beauty, pleading the cause of her own desperate heart, his brain reeled before this fresh temptation. Did the struggle of all these long months and the resolution displayed in his flight count for nothing? Had he come all these long four hundred miles only to capitulate here? Perish the thought, and yet his breath came fast and faster as he gazed upon her, and his eyes faltered and fell before the terrible battery of hers. He held up his hands, palm outward, as a drowning man who finds the current too strong for him, and murmured, “Leave me. For God’s sake go away and leave me.”

That is what he meant to say—and perhaps it is what he did say—but every sense he had was surrendering to the irresistible usurper, and he could not be sure that even his speech was not betraying him.

He tried to think of Jeannie, but his very soul shook as if there, too, in the very holy of holies of his heart, a traitor was offering capitulation on the conqueror’s own terms.

Every glance was a temptation to the stricken man as Gwendoline Beattison stood before him. Her closely fitting habit revealed every throb of the over-charged bosom and told all too plainly the tempest which was convulsing it. His own heart bounded madly in response, every fibre of his powerful frame thrilled in sympathy with the passion which shook the voluptuous figure before him, and his eyes no longer sought the ground but, alas!—bon grÉ mal grÉ—soon outdid hers in their fiery candor.

Words failed them both. It was the silence of the duel when the smallest flash of the blade may mean a life. As deadly was their silence and as vital, but their eyes—ah, their eyes spoke with a measureless volume and thrill, which deadened their ears to every earthly sound.

“Oh, why can’t you love me, dear? am I so unattractive that you must run away from me?”

As Gwendoline Beattison said this, a wonderfully soft and pathetic look came into her beautiful eyes, and, as if unable longer to control herself, she placed her two trembling hands on Richard Dalrymple’s shoulders.

“Why is it, dear—won’t you tell me?” and the voice which had been shaken by passion became strangely gentle and tender as the straying hands growing bolder stole around his neck and her beating heart in dire proximity fired his own anew.

Oh, Jeannie Farquharson why do you not hurry to the relief of your faltering lover, true to you so long in the face of a desperate temptation, but now, alas, in the toils!

Too late! the perfume which surrounded the fair temptress like an atmosphere was in his nostrils, the intoxication of her gaze mounted to his brain; her touch thrilled him to his finger-tips, his very soul tottered on its throne, and in another instant their lips met in a long clinging kiss—a kiss never to be undone, never to be forgotten, the kiss of a lifetime after which man and woman ought to die eternally, since in its rapture they have beggared Paradise!

The long ecstatic kiss ended at last, the tumultuously beating feminine heart grew still, the living, throbbing being in Richard Dalrymple’s arms became a dead weight, and Gwendoline Beattison sank back insensible, a victim to her own uncontrollable emotion.

“Oh, Dick, Dick, where are you? I saw you a minute ago.”

Such was the cry—all too late—which, welcome beyond words a few minutes ago, now sounded like the knell of doom in Richard Dalrymple’s ears.

Placing Miss Beattison’s inanimate form gently against a mossy knoll our perturbed hero presented himself over the wall of foliage and called to his lady-love, “Oh wait there, I will be with you in a minute.”

“No, stay where you are,” came back the silvery response; “you can’t come down, I will cross the river on the stepping stones and come to you.”

“Oh, but this is awful,” muttered Richard under his breath, “Jeannie will be here in three minutes and will find Miss Beattison, and how on earth can I explain things?”

Then he turned his attention to Miss Beattison, who was slowly regaining consciousness. “Are you feeling better?” he began with a wonderful softness and shamefacedness in eye and tone, when suddenly a piercing scream made him leap to his feet and run to the other side of the bridge.

“My God! Jeannie has fallen in and been swept over the rapids.”

Then he sped like a deer across the bridge, down the sloping bank at the further side and past the rushing rapids to the whirling pool where poor Jeannie, still partially buoyed up by her clothes, was whirling around in the grasp of the fatal current.

CHAPTER VII.

A WILD thrill of remorse shot through Richard Dalrymple’s heart even as he sprang headlong into the whirlpool, and then he felt as if he was fighting for his life in the embrace of a hundred devil-fish.

This way and that the currents buffeted him, fed in their strength by the momentum of the rapids above, until all the breath was battered out of his body. Suddenly a wayward current threw him against a projecting rock which he caught, thereby probably saving his life. A coward would have ceased his efforts at this point, but not so Richard Dalrymple. Once more the form of his sweetheart met his eye, this time in the pool beyond. Gathering himself up with such strength as he had left, he climbed over the intervening rocks and again plunged to the rescue.

This time his effort was successful. With choking words of encouragement, to cheer his sweetheart, who was fast losing consciousness, by an Herculean effort he swam with her to the lower shore and pushed her gently before him on to the low bank. All at once the friendly swirl of the current changed and he was borne out into the centre of the whirlpool. Again he caught the point of a rock, this time with his feet, and by swimming with all his force, he maintained for a short space a precarious foothold.

He knew that in a very few minutes, his strength being gone, he must cease his efforts and then——

His brain seemed to become cleared as his strength failed. “Perhaps things are happening for the best,” he thought as his arms became like lead, his feet wavered in their hold, and a circling wave caught him in its arms and whirled him off into the lower rapids.

When through the rush of water in his ears he heard a loud cry and his failing sight caught the figure of a woman on horseback dashing in to the foaming current, even in his death throes his heart thrilled as he recognized the form of Miss Beattison.

“Steady, Saladin, steady, now.” He heard the ringing tones, he felt a strong touch on his shoulder, and then he was dragged from the foaming water, out of the jaws of death and on to the shelving edge of pebbles which here replaced the jagged rock.

Although considerably bruised by being hurled against the rock by the powerful current, none of Richard Dalrymple’s bones were broken and in a few minutes he was able to rise to his feet. He had already been assured by Miss Beattison that Miss Farquharson was reviving. As he rose Miss Beattison was standing by the side of Saladin, who was still panting from his tremendous fight with the current. Saladin’s head was between the two, and it seemed at first as if neither cared to round the dangerous point and meet each other after the episode of the bridge.

This time, however, the man was the bolder, and presently Richard Dalrymple stood face to face with Gwendoline Beattison. For an instant her eyes met his with a startled look of conscious shyness, then the downward sweep of the dark lashes veiled their expression, and only the faint color in the cheeks told of the maiden’s agitation.

“Miss Beattison, you have saved my life, I thank you for it;” here he raised her hand and gently kissed it; “but indeed I think it would have been better for us all if you had let me drown. Try to forget all that has passed between us to-day, and permit me to assist you to your saddle. I must go to Miss Farquharson’s aid.”

“Miss Farquharson is in good hands, she is with the gentleman she is about to marry,” was the response in a somewhat uneven tone of voice.

“What can you mean, Miss Beattison? Miss Farquharson is engaged to myself.”

“To you?” exclaimed the other reining in her horse abruptly. “Oh, the shock of your narrow escape must have then affected your brain,—but look for yourself.”

By this time the two had rounded the corner which hid Miss Farquharson from view, and a glance revealed his friend, Alec Douglas, sitting on a boulder with his arm round the waist of Miss Farquharson, whose head lay confidingly on his shoulder.

For a moment, Richard Dalrymple stiffened as if turned into marble, and then arresting the motion of his companion with a wave of his hand he stepped swiftly over the noiseless stretch of sand towards the pair whose backs were towards him.

CHAPTER VIII.

“MY darling,” he heard the voice of his friend Alec Douglas saying, “what should I have done if you had been drowned, my bonnie blue-eyed forget-me-not. Who rescued you?”

The grim listener had heard the name of that little flower before, and his lip curled scornfully and bitterly as he heard it now applied by the mouth of another to the woman whom he had always worshipped as his own.

Just for a moment he experienced a passing twinge as a reminder of the scene on the bridge where he had scarcely proven himself the knight without reproach.

But that was only a momentary yielding to a terrible temptation; a man surrenders very little in such an encounter compared with a woman.

Thus he reasoned to himself while his heart told him that such an argument in his case was false, false as the bottomless pit; and that never again in life could he rebuild against that besieger on the bridge, the broken walls and citadel of his heart.

But no man lessens his rage at the defection of another—especially if that other is a woman upon whom he has claims—simply because he happens to be conscious of a like personal frailty; and so, although he staggered under the accusation of his own heart, Richard Dalrymple abated not one whit the contempt of the glance he turned on the unconscious Jeannie.

And beyond all doubt he suffered acutely, although in the tumult of his mind he was conscious of wondering why he did not suffer more. The treachery of his sweetheart shattered an idol on whose worn shrine he had lavished all the love and fealty of his manhood’s freshest years, and around which he had twined the fairest garlands which youth’s blind unquestioning idolatry can weave.

That the idol he had worshipped was nobler than the divinity it represented, goes without saying where youth’s lofty ideal is unchecked and uncorrected by a continual comparison with the original.

Thus poor Jeannie had fallen not only from herself, but she had fallen deeper far from the high ideal her lover had fixed in his mind.

“A badly broken idol,” Richard Dalrymple said in looking at Jeannie—and notwithstanding all the ravage done to his own feelings, he was painfully conscious that it was a badly damaged idolater too, who looked on.

“Who rescued you, my darling?” repeated Alec Douglas.

“Oh dear, dear,” sobbed his companion, “how can I tell you? the man who saved my life was your friend Richard Dalrymple, and—- and he believes I am engaged to be married to him. Oh, please don’t be angry with—me, it was only a girlish love which I have outgrown, and I don’t love anyone but you, darling. I had not written to him for months and I thought he would understand that I wished everything to end between us.”

To the onlooker the idol seemed more than broken now, it was pulverized to very fine powder indeed.

A heavy shadow falling across the two lovers caused them to turn, and to find themselves face to face with a haggard and dishevelled man, whose pallid face and dark upbraiding eye, caused them to spring hastily to their feet.

Before the image confronting them both found themselves speechless.

“Is that true what you have been saying, Jeannie?” inquired Richard in a hollow voice, “that your love for me was but a girlish fancy, and that you love Douglas here—my old friend Alec, to whom I confided my secret last night?”

No answer save that of downcast eye and burning cheek, and presently a glance of wonderful regret and misery under the long level lashes.

“Betrayed by both betrothed and bosom friend! have you nothing to say, Douglas?”

“Yes, indeed, I have, Dalrymple,” replied the other; “now, old friend, bear with me awhile. I swear to you I did not know of your engagement until last night—and as far as Jeannie is concerned, she was just telling me that as she had not written you for so long she thought you would understand that she wished to end the engagement. You know,” turning softly to Jeannie and laying a gentle caressing hand on her head, “if there is one thing this little girl dreads more than another it is anything approaching a quarrel, and she put off telling you of the change in her feelings thinking that you would scold and make a dreadful upset about it. Of course the whole thing is a terrible mistake all through, but, Dick, I never betrayed a friend in my life, and I would have killed myself rather than have made love to your sweetheart if I had known it.”

At this the gentle Jeannie gave a scarcely perceptible toss of her fair head as if to say, “That just shows how much wiser my way was.”

“I see, I see,” exclaimed the other bitterly, “I have only my own blind unsuspecting devotion to thank for all this. If I had doubted and mistrusted like other men this thing would never have happened. Alec, I bear you no malice, you did not know. Jeannie, you made light work of a heart that deserved better from you.”

“Oh, Dick, dear Dick, please——” began Jeannie, but he waved her away. “Please leave me,” he added bitterly, “and if I must do without your love, at least spare me the insult of your pity. Take back your forget-me-nots and broken coin,” he added, taking the cigar-case and coin from his pocket and handing them to her still wet with the whirling pool from which he had saved her.

Jeannie would have replied, but the wise Alec, recognizing that much lee-way must be allowed to the disappointed lover, motioned her not to speak, and in silence they left as Richard turned on his heel and strode away across the sand.

When he turned he expected to find himself if not face to face with, at least within reach of, Miss Beattison, and the fact that she was not in sight sent a keen and to him mysterious pang to his heart. He felt he needed the sympathy of someone whose tenderness would not be an insult, and now the only being whom he felt could have poured balm on his wounds had disappeared.

He sat down by the water’s edge to think out the new scheme of his life under the altered conditions of the morning, and somehow the tumult of the broken waves seemed a suitable back ground to his thoughts.

For a while he sat in silence revolving the morning’s events in his mind, and after a time he drew from his pocket two objects which we, the readers, have seen before.

One was the photograph of Miss Farquharson, and the other the handkerchief found in the train. The former, blurred and defaced by the action of the water in his rescue of Miss Farquharson, caused him to smile a sad, bitter, miserable smile, to which a tear would have been preferable.

“The river ends it all,” he said as he tossed the photograph into the torrent, “I almost wish it had ended me too.”

Then his eye fell upon the cambric handkerchief found in the train, and a warmth seemed to steal from it, wet and crumpled as it was, which set his heart beating to a faster measure.

“It seems to me,” he said softly, “as if all these long years I had been prizing the shell and neglecting the priceless pearl.” Then, as he kissed the handkerchief again and again—and now at last without remorse—his mind travelled back to the scene on the bridge. Again in his vision there arose the love illumined eyes and passionate glance of the woman whom he was fain to confess now he had loved fondly even when he fled from her. The passion of her presence seemed again to thrill him as he sat there pressing her handkerchief to his lips, and in the fever of his unrest he sprang to his feet and turned towards the highway, only to find himself face to face with Gwendoline Beattison herself.

For a moment the love-light still burning in his eyes seemed to surprise and dazzle her, and then as he opened wide his arms and murmured the one word “darling,” she fled to his heart with a glad cry.

There, eye to eye, heart to heart, and soul to soul, love’s dominion was restored, and Cupid’s glancing arrows at length found their rightful mark.

THE END.