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flutter of happy expectation to the home of the well-appreciated betrothed.

There was a sense of quiet, almost an air of chill, about the interior, when, the door being opened at length by a servant, who looked aggrievedly unprepared for such early callers, they stepped into the Hall. Helen was not a quiet woman, as a rule. Her clear, cheery voice was generally heard ringing out some order or direction when she knew whose was the ring that signalled a visitor. Surely she must have known this morning that none other than her affianced husband would have invaded her thus early? A sudden, stabbing suspicion that she "was ill" shot through Mr. Wyndham's heart. He could hardly frame his question for sheer nervousness, but the answer came promptly.

"Missus is quite well, sir, thank you. She's staying at Lord Roydmore's. There was a note came for her maid last night, and she packed up some of missus' things, and went off in the carriage that brought the note, without saying a word."

Mr. Wyndham's face fell visibly.

"It is rather selfish of them to detain Helen, knowing as they must how she is situated with regard to you," Miss Wyndham said gently. "What shall we do, Ralph ?"

"I shall follow her, and hear if her presence is absolutely essential to those poor young people in their distress. You had better wait here, Dorothy, my dear, till our return."

Miss Dorothy shook her head.

"The time will seem shorter, Ralph, if I am shopping instead of waiting here alone. I shall go into The Grove and look at Whiteley's. Dear, dear! I bought the ribbons and flowers for my first ball at Whiteley's, when he was only in one little shop, with himself and two lady assistants. I shall pass my time very pleasantly; don't think of me, don't hurry, Ralph.”

The hansom which conveyed Mr. Wyndham over to Lord Roydmore's house was well-horsed and smartly-driven, but it seemed to him to crawl with malignant perversity. When he stepped out, it was with such almost boyish impatience that he slipped and hurt his knee on the threshold of his rival's door. The faint, sickening sensation, which is the invariable accompaniment to any fracture or displacement of the knee-cap, assailed him, and it was with a painful effort that he managed to hobble into the hall and reach a chair.

"Mrs. Collette is here, I understand?" he began; "give her my card, and ask her if she will kindly come here and speak to me. Unfortunately I feel unable to walk a step farther."

The sudden marriage by special licence of the day before had sent an electric shock through the whole household. The excitement had been so great, in fact, that everyone was hoping for more. If Lord Roydmore had died from the effects of the agitation, his faithful retainers would have pulled long faces, and spoken in the suppressed accents of spurious grief. But in what they had of heart they would have felt a melancholy pleasure in the serio-comedy ending in a tragedy. The family had all borne the unexpected introduction of Mrs. Collette into the first place in it with what the servants thought tame toleration. Accordingly, now it occurred to the butler and footman that they might as well have the pleasure of seeing this poor, unconscious gentleman get "a bloomin' surprise!" They pitied him for the anguish his displaced knee-cap was causing him, but that pain, they intuitively felt, would be nothing to that which he would endure when he learnt that the Mrs. Collette he was inquiring for so tenderly was transformed into Lady Roydmore.

You take the card to her ladyship, while I get the gentleman a glass of sherry; he'll need it," the butler muttered in a low voice. Still, low as it was, Mr. Wyndham caught the word "ladyship," and felt puzzled by it, but not alarmed.

As he sat there alone, trying to believe that his knee was only bruised, and that as soon as he felt less faint he would be able to get up and walk, he heard voices mingling in lively badinage coming down the stairs.

The first was a man's voice, a young, clear, polished-toned voice, that struck agreeably on Mr. Wyndham's ear.

"My dear mamma," it was saying, "I shall claim all the privileges of a son-of a pet son, in fact. I shall go back with you to your own house, and destroy the photographs of all the good-looking fellows I find-"

"Jack, I won't let you come back with me to-day," Helen's voice answered, half-comically, half-earnestly. "I have to break the great news to my servants, and give them notice to quit me; and well, altogether, you will be in my way for once, my dear, new son."

They were in view of Mr. Wyndham now, crossing the hall from the foot of the stairs towards the entrance-door, near which he sat, Helen herself looking brilliantly beautiful and happy in a handsome walking costume, and a good-looking young fellow, who had hold of her hand with an easy air of familiarity, and who was pretending to button her glove. At sight of Mr. Wyndham, pallid with pain, and a ghastly sense of dread of the unknown, Jack Herries uttered an exclamation of surprise, and Helen a little cry of confusion. It was horrible to her to be threatened with an ignominious, commonplace, unromantic overthrow in these first hours of triumph. For she had triumphed. Already she had won Jack to enlist under her banner, and swear to fight her battles, by the power of that physical beauty which she so well knew how to show in its most seductive light before the eyes of men. She had won by this power, and by the sweet desire to please which she could put into her manner at any given moment, but she felt that she had need of all these munitions of feminine war now, as she came unexpectedly upon the man to whom she had pledged herself the day before, and who still looked upon her as his betrothed wife.

"You are in pain," she cried, putting her hand on his shoulder; "my dear Mr. Wyndham, you must only speak to tell me how you are hurt. Your knee? Oh! I have always heard what a ghastly, sickly pain it is. Jack, Mr. Herries, will you order an ambulance to be fetched, and I will accompany my poor friend back to my own house, and send for his sister

"Dorothy is in town, Helen," Mr. Wyndham said, hopelessly hanging on to her hand, and trying to make her look into his poor, plump, miserable face. "She came up to congratulate us," he went on, but Helen hushed him down authoritatively.

"Not one word more till you are resting at my house, and a doctor and Dorothy are with you," she said aloud. Then she followed Jack Herries a little apart and whispered:

"A dear old valued and eccentric friend of mine, Jack, to whom the news of my sudden marriage will probably give some offence. He will think he ought to have been consulted. I will stay with him alone till the ambulance comes. The petulance of pain might make him say something before a third person which would be misleading, disagreeable for me in fact, and a source of regret to him, therefore don't let either Florence or Jane come near him."

Jack nodded acquiescence to her request cheerfully, but he thought, "Poor old Johnnie, she has made a fool of you, has she? Well, the next best thing to fooling a pretty woman is to be fooled by one, and my new mamma is a jolly pretty woman, and no mistake."

Lady Roydmore knew that Mr. Wyndham was too true and proud a gentleman to question servants, or even to lend an ear to their utterances. Accordingly, she left him with the butler and footman without distrust, while they waited for the ambulance. Meantime, she herself went back to the chamber of her legal lord. A few words of explanation from her own lips would be serviceable, in case anything should leak out during her absence.

Lord Roydmore was sitting up in a large, comfortable chair by an open window, with a little table beside him covered with flowers, newspapers and letters. He was looking so much. stronger and better than he had done on the previous day, that Helen felt there had been something like trickery in his hastening on their marriage on the plea that he feared speedy dissolution. However, he was hers to make the best of now, and she honestly determined to do it.

"An old gentleman called Wyndham-a very old friend of mine-came here to inquire for me just now, as his sister has come up to see me from Redhill, and he fell and has hurt his knee-cap. Jack has gone or sent for an ambulance, and I shall take him to my old house, and have him nursed there by his sister."

She put her hand on her husband's shoulder, and bent towards him as she spoke. A sickly odour of drugs and cosmetics hung about him. She drew back quickly, showing the physical disgust she felt more plainly than she had intended.

"It will be quite enough if Long goes with him; send Long," he suggested, or rather ordered, in a tone that got up his newlymade wife's mettle at once.

"I told you I was going with him; you must not try to make up or un-make my mind for me, Roydmore."

She spoke brightly. It was not in her programme to quarrel with or annoy him, but that he should not alter that programme was her fixed determination.

CHAPTER XII.

HELEN STARTS FRESH.

MISS WYNDHAM had done shopping and gone back to Mrs. Collette's house long before her brother, escorted by Helen, was conveyed thither. The little brougham containing Lady Roydmore had kept pace with the ambulance, consequently she had ample time to frame and polish the sentences that should make him acquainted with the revolution she had worked in his life. and her own.

It would be embarrassing to the last degree. Cool and collected, not to say callous, as she was, Helen felt that it would be embarrassing to explain the motives which had influenced her and caused her to take the action she had taken on the previous day. She resolved to humble herself prettily before the kind old man whom she had befooled. She would heap up such blame upon her own head as would disarm him, and win his forgiveness. Penitential tears should be freely shed. Fortunately he would be her sole audience, she thought. It would be easy to imply that she had preferred him to Lord Roydmore, though honour, pity and overwhelming circumstances had compelled her to marry the latter gentleman. He was so gentlenatured and generous that he would forgive her, she felt sure, and remain her fast friend in the future, as he had been in the past.

Her heart beat a trifle faster as she entered her own house, and began to give orders to her servants about the preparations to be made for his reception; but it almost stood still when she was told that Miss Wyndham and Captain Stafford were both waiting for her in the drawing-room.

Here was an unforeseen complication. She knew Miss Dorothy far too well not to feel sure that she had been amiably garrulous on the subject of her brother's engagement. How Harry must be despising her. How much more would he despise her when the whole truth was told. On the whole, it must be conceded to her that she had good nerve to go in and face her visitors with such a story as she had to tell.

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