Mrs. Lascelles was a lady who could ill-keep a secret. Such disclosures as those made in the boudoir after tea, when Helen had gone up-stairs to rest, roused alike her indignation and her sympathy; she would have cried for justice from the house-tops, rather than suffer the fraud to pass unexposed. Even Goldthred did not escape rebuke for the very negative part he had taken in the transaction.

"Why didn't you bring it here that instant?" she asked, in her pretty, imperious way, while she filled her admirer's tea-cup, and offered him the easiest chair in the room. "You shouldn't have kept such a thing from me for half-a-second. It's not like you to be so wicked, and I'm determined to scold you well!"

"But it was one o'clock in the morning," urged Goldthred, with a comical look of deprecation. "And you must remember I thought you didn't care a bit for me then. Of course it would be different now."

"That's nonsense," she exclaimed. "You know I always liked you; and as for your cool suggestion of coming here at one in the morning now, I beg you won't attempt anything of the kind. But you ought to have told me indeed, because, after all, the note might have been from somebody who had fallen in love with you!"

"I didn't suppose such a thing possible," he answered simply, "and I'm sure I didn't wish it. I used to think happiness was never intended for me. The one I liked seemed so much too good. I'm often afraid I shall wake and find it all a dream."

"Not half good enough," she murmured, making a great clatter among the cups and saucers. "I wish I was ten times better, and I mean to be. But never mind about that. Don't you see exactly what has happened?"

"No, I don't," he answered, wondering fondly whether in Europe could be found such a pair of hands and arms as were hovering about the tea-tray under his nose. "I dare say I'm very stupid, but hang me if I can see daylight anywhere!"

"Not if you look for it in my bracelet," she said, laughing. "But it's obvious Helen has written you a note intended for somebody else. Unless"—here she threatened him with a pretty finger he longed to kiss—"unless you have reason to believe she valued the admiration you could not disguise in all your looks and actions."

"Don't say such things!" he exclaimed, in the utmost alarm. "Mrs. Lascelles, do you think I'm—I'm that sort of fellow? Surely you know me better. Surely you are only in joke!"

"You're deep, sir" she continued, still laughing at an earnestness that touched while it amused her. "Deep and sly! However, I'll believe you this time, and if you're honestly stupid I'll condescend to explain. Can you take in, that if the note wasn't written to you it must have been intended for somebody else? I can guess who that somebody is. I'll ask Helen point-blank. She's as proud as Lucifer, but I think she has confidence in me."

She did ask Helen point-blank, and that young lady, though as proud as Lucifer, condescended to own the truth, but accompanied her confession with a solemn declaration that everything was at an end between herself and Frank Vanguard, so that the great desire of her heart now was never to set eyes on him again. Mrs. Lascelles interpreting these sentiments in her own way, sat down forthwith, and penned the following little note, for further mystification of this bewildered young officer.

"Dear Captain Vanguard,—I have discovered something you ought to know. Such an embrouillement was never heard of but in an improbable farce, or still more improbable novel. Come to luncheon to-morrow, and we will lay our heads together in hopes of unravelling the skein. Miss Hallaton is staying with me. You will like to meet her I am sure, only you and I must have our conference first.

"Yours very sincerely,

"Rose Lascelles."

Frank's heart leaped under his cuirass while he read this mysterious epistle, on his return from a sweltering inspection in the Long Walk. He had been trying to persuade himself he did not care for Helen, and fancied he succeeded. It was humiliating to feel that the bare mention of her name could thus affect him, yet was there a keen, strange pleasure in the sensation nevertheless.

On the barrack-room table of this fortunate dragoon there lay however another little missive, bearing to that of Mrs. Lascelles the sort of likeness a pen-wiper has to a butterfly. Its envelope was squarer and larger, its monogram gaudier and more intricate, its superscription fainter, paler, more aslant, more illegible. It exhaled a strong odour of musk, and was written on paper that glistened like satin.

"Dear Frank," it ran, "I shall be in the park to-morrow, at twelve. Look for the pony-carriage. I want you—so no nonsense. Don't fail—there's a good fellow.—Yours truly,—Kate Cremorne. P.S. If I'm not under the clock, wait there till I come."

"What can she be up to now?" thought Frank, carefully twisting this communication into a spill with which to light his cigar. "Got into a mess of some sort, no doubt, and expects me to pull her through, like the rest of them. How odd it is, I'm always blundering into entanglements with women I don't care two straws about, and the one I really could love, the one who would make me a good man, I do believe, and certainly a happy one, seems to be drifting every day farther and farther out of my reach. I shall see her to-morrow, and what then? I suppose our greeting will be confined to a distant bow, and some conventional sentence more painful than a cut direct. Still, I shall see her. That will be something. How strange it seems to be so easily satisfied now, when I think of all I hoped and expected so short a time ago. Well, beggars mustn't be choosers. I suppose I may as well meet Kate Cremorne first, and do her a turn if I can. She's a good girl, Kate, after all. Not half a bad-looking one neither, and as honest as the day."

So twelve o'clock found Frank very nicely dressed, and with a wonderfully prosperous air, considering his many troubles, picking his way daintily across the deserted Ride, to where a solitary pony-carriage, with a solitary pony drawing, and a solitary lady driving it, stood like a pretty toy, drawn up by the footway under the clock.

Miss Cremorne received him with coldness, even displeasure. She entertained a high opinion of her own acuteness, and thought she had hit upon a discovery by no means to his credit. In her many visits to Miss Ross—visits never made empty-handed, and to which, in all probability, the latter owed her restoration to health—she gathered from Jin that a friendship had lately existed between herself and the Captain Vanguard of whom they both loved to talk. Now, Belgravia and Brompton look at most matters in life, and particularly those connected with the affections, from different points of view. Kate, though a hybrid belonging to both districts, partook largely of the sentiments and feelings affected by the latter. She imagined a touching little romance, of which Jin's dark, curly-headed boy was the sequel, and being herself sans peur, determined to show Frank she did not hold him sans reproche.

"Jump in," said she, with extreme abruptness, as he approached the carriage. "I've got a crow to pick with you, and I mean to have it out. You're a nice young man, now! Don't you think you are?"

"Certainly," answered Frank, with imperturbable bonhomie. "I used to hope you thought so too!"

"I'll tell you what I used to think," said Kate, lashing the pony with considerable vehemence. "I used to think you were a good fellow at heart, though the nonsense had never been taken out of you; that you were only vain and affected on the surface, like lots of you guardsmen, but that there was a man inside the dandy, if one could only get at him. Oh, Captain Vanguard, I'm disappointed in you! If I cared two straws for a fellow, and he did as you've done, I'd never speak to him again! There!"

The whip was again dropped on the pony, and they shaved the wheels of an omnibus to an inch.

"Don't take it so to heart, Kate!" laughed Frank. "If I have deserted you, I'll come back again. You know, Miss Cremorne, that you are the only woman I ever loved, and all that. Fate has been obdurate; but rather would I be torn with wild——"

"Will you be serious?" demanded the fair charioteer, knitting her brows, and looking intensely austere. "Do you know where I am driving you now?"

He was incorrigible.

"To Gretna, I trust, or the Register Office. That's what I should like with you. Let's have it out, Kate. Jump over a broomstick, and the thing's done!"

"I'll tell you where you're going," she said gravely: "I am taking you to see Miss Ross!"

His whole countenance changed; and with all his self-command, he could not disguise how deeply he was agitated.

"Miss Ross!" he stammered. "You have heard from her! You know where she is!"

"I have seen her every day for the last fortnight," was the answer. "Seen her battle and bear up against sorrow, sickness, privation—actual want! Ay, many a day, when you've been sitting down to a dinner of four courses and dessert, that woman and her boy—her boy, Captain Vanguard—have not had enough to eat!"

"Great heavens, Kate!" he exclaimed. "This is too shocking! Why did I not know of it before?"

"Why, indeed!" repeated Kate. "You may well ask yourself the question. Whose duty was it but yours to be answerable for her, poor dear, to find her a home, to provide for her and the child? I don't want to have many words about it. I'm not one of that sort; but I tell you she would have starved—yes—starved, if I hadn't happened to run against her by good luck, just in the nick of time."

"God bless you, Kate!"

His eyes were full of tears, and she looked at him a little less hardly than before, but answered in scornful accents:

"Ought such a job as that to have been left to me?"

"Miss Cremorne! Kate!" he urged; "you think worse of me than I deserve! There is nothing I wouldn't have done, no sacrifice I wouldn't have made, to insure Miss Ross's comfort! It is not my fault, indeed! I give you my word of honour, I have left no stone unturned to discover her place of refuge from the moment she disappeared, and never obtained the slightest trace of her till to-day."

"Gammon!" replied Kate, pulling the pony short up by the kerbstone. "There's the house. It's not much to look at, but it's better inside than out, since she's found a chance friend, poor thing! Run up-stairs and see her. Say I meant to have taken her out for a drive, but I'll come again in the afternoon. I never did—I never will—believe you're a bad-hearted fellow, Frank; but you've done no end of mischief here. Go and undo it now."

So Kate drove off at high pressure, leaving Frank on the door-step, confronting a maid-of-all-work, who, seeming to expect him, yet glanced from time to time with considerable interest and approval at his general appearance and outline.

He was shown into a clean, neatly furnished apartment, from which he could distinctly hear his announcement as "The gentleman, if you please, ma'am," and the rustle of a dress that followed this information. Then the door opened, and Miss Ross stopped short on the threshold, exclaiming only—

"Frank!"

The tone denoted nothing but extreme and overwhelming astonishment.

Looking in her face, he could not but admit she was sadly altered. A few short weeks had changed the brilliant, piquante beauty to a faded invalid, with wan, wasted features, lit up only by the wonderful black eyes.

His first thought was the humiliating question—"Can this be the woman I fancied I loved so dearly?" His second brought a manly and natural resolution to stand by her all the more firmly for her distress.

"Jin," he exclaimed, "why did you leave me like that? What has been the matter? and why didn't you trust entirely to me?"

He would have taken her in his arms, but she waved him off, and the delight that had flashed across her face when she confronted him gave way to a cold, unnatural reserve.

"Did you get my letter?" she asked. "And why are you here?"

He explained how and why he had come, touching on the disappointment he experienced in the contents of her communication, trying to put into his tones that warmth of affection which he felt was completely extinguished in his heart.

"I did not mean to see you again, Captain Vanguard," she said, in a measured voice; "I did not wish to see you again. The person I expected was your friend, Mr. Picard. That man stands between us, and always must. I will have no more concealments now—no more foul play—no more crime. I have been punished enough; I pray heaven I may not be punished yet more! I deceived you, Captain Vanguard, because I—well—I believe I did care for you, as much as it is in my wicked, heartless nature to care for anybody; but I meant you to marry me. And all the time Picard was my husband!"

"Your husband!" He had no power to utter another word.

"It takes your breath away," she exclaimed, with a touch of her old malice. "You are so innocent! so inexperienced! Frank, I believe you did mean honestly by me. I believe you thought you liked me; and I certainly—well—I liked you. Horribly—shamefully! To win you, I was guilty of a fraud, a degradation, une bassesse, entendez vous? une lÂchetÉ. I took the letter of a girl who loved you, and I sent it off to another man—a good creature, mais tant soit peu ganache, who didn't know what to make of it. Never mind. I detached you from her, and caught you for myself. But I would not make you a slave to my husband; I know him too well. None of us come out of this imbroglio very creditably, and, believe me, your part is not of the highest calibre; but I have injured you, and now, because my spirit is broke, I try to make reparation. Go to your Miss Hallaton; explain all to her; marry her, if you will! Oh! Frank, be happy with her, I entreat of you; and never come to see me any more!"

She looked in his face for about half a second, made a plunge at his hand, caught it eagerly to her heart, her eyes, her lips, and was in the next room, of which he heard the door locked and bolted, before he had realised the fact that she was gone.

He waited, he called, he went and tapped at that securely fortified retreat, he even rang for the servant, and begged her to ask the lady whether there were no more commands for him before he left; but without avail.

"Why the devil Kate brought me here," said Frank to himself, standing once more in the street, looking helplessly about for a Hansom cab, "is more than I can make out! One thing's clear—I'm not bound in any way to Miss Ross. Hang it! she's not Miss Ross! What a fool I've been! I don't deserve to get out of the mess so well. Helen, my darling! I ought to have known, if they hadn't got at you, you'd have been as true as steel! By Jove, though, I'm bound in honour to book up to Kate! It must have cost her a goodish stake, and I don't suppose Picard will."

But when this proposal was submitted to Miss Cremorne, she repudiated it with a contempt savouring of Belgravia, and an energy of expression not unworthy of Brompton.