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boxes, its scattered curl-papers and huddle of unoccupied chairs, he was to leave behind him a dead belief. As he rounded this new corner of his life with finality his manner changed.

He drew back from her, placed his heels together and made a low bow. His eyes were mocking.

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My compliments upon your miming!" he exclaimed. "Pon honour, you do it well. I must commend you to Mr. Garrick. Play out your rôles, dear Lady Caroline. I kiss your hand. Faith, it diverts me to think how I must have irked you with what you call my Methodistical airs!"

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'Yerington," she entreated, desperation in her voice, for he was bowing himself nearer to the door, his face white and hard. Darting past him, she stood barring his passage, one hand stretched to ward him back. "Don't leave me like this. I'll be what you will,-discreet, kind to Dashwood. Don't leave me."

His manner was courteous and suave.

"I cannot bring myself to lay a hand upon you," he said. "But, methinks, your tire-woman might wonder if I sought the other passage."

She fell forward upon her knees, sobbing and clinging to him.

"Another pose?" he queried. "I commend you. 'Tis infinitely becoming. Had Niobe so superb a neck I'll swear the gods would have spared her."

He slipped past her and opened the door.

Seeing him upon the eve of departure broke down the last clinging shreds of her pride. If he left her with that expression on his face she knew her last hold upon him was gone, that he went forever. The future loomed before her terrifying, unfaceable.

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Yerington, Yerington!" she pleaded, all tactful facility of phrase deserting her in her panic of the empty

future, "don't go! On my knees I beseech you, don't go!"

His eyes grew cruel. For the first time in his life he read her more unworthy than she was.

She was a beautiful picture. Her curls drooped about her face; her eyes were eloquent with despair; her soft, round arms were stretched out to him in an agony of entreaty. The sight of her loveliness but deepened the sting of his disillusion. How above all women in his world had she stood but an hour before! He turned sick at soul as he looked at her. His faith in her had been so rare a thing, helping like the roots of a sturdy tree to keep the earth within his soul in poise. His belief in good dwindled to a pin-point.

As her groping fingers touched him, he laughed out a harsh, abrupt peal that struck her like a blow. She shrank together, shuddering, her eyes fixed and staring upon his.

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Acting again, my lady," he mocked.

Stay, stay," she murmured with stiff lips, putting a further stamp upon his misreading.

A flame of wrath shot through him.

"You bid me stay," he said, his voice like steel, “you would have me lend myself to the base rôle you've planned for me. Prithee, upon what terms would you have me? As your paramour? How may I judge where I stand in your regard? God! God!" he cried in a sudden access of feeling; "I'd loathe thee less had I not trusted thee so utterly. How many men, bethink you, have you besought to stay?"

With a moan she covered her face.

"No, no! not that," she cried inarticulately. lieve me, not that."

"Be

"You've taught me to believe," he exclaimed bitterly. "Would you have me again believe you and be twice

befooled?" He threw back his head with a gesture of his hand across his forehead. Gad! but that diverts me. The Lady Caroline protests."

He opened the door and closed it upon his laugh. Every note of it rang an insult. When an instant later he reopened it he discovered the woman he had just flouted crouched where he had left her, her eyes wild.

"If you betray Dashwood I'll not spare you," he said. She listened dumbly until the ring of his heel upon the parquet floor was no longer audible. As the last echo of it died to silence she threw herself prostrate, clutching at the polished boards in a paroxysm of futile passion.

"I'll make him suffer," she gasped, "I'll make him suffer, suffer, suffer!"

Her voice ceased. Lady Caroline had fainted honestly, simply, directly,-not from wounded love, but from rage and flagellated vanity.

CHAPTER X

A HEDGEROW BURLESQUE

FAG. You'll be secret, Thomas?
COACHMAN.-As a coach-horse.

FAG.-Why then the cause of all this is-Love-who has been a masquerader ever since the days of Jupiter.

-RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

A TRAVELLING coach, drawn by four white horses, was bowling over the highroads of Warwickshire. The postilions, rising and falling in their saddles, were urging the animals forward at a smart pace. They knew well that one of the gentlemen in the coach behind them. was no lover of slow travelling.

The coach was followed by a chaise, piled high within and without with luggage, and containing two gentlemen's gentlemen. One was a dapper little man, with his eyebrows half way up his forehead, and who at every changing of the horses carefully counted and recounted the luggage.

The dusky coach had two occupants. Lord Yerington was lounging in a corner making an ineffective attempt at slumber. Captain Elliot leaned forward, intent upon the scenes through which they raced.

"Wake up, you lazy dog," said the Captain, prodding his companion, "and see the real world. This is better than the Mall."

Yerington peered out sleepily. "The real world," he quoted. "Item, a village with one street; item, a slinking dog; item, a horse trough; item, an inebriated yokel. Spud me, I'd rather buy a toy one at Mistress Chevenixes'."

Elliot laughed in high spirits, for he thought he was having his own way in this journey.

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Pay up like a gentleman, and no grumbling," he said, for you know it was this flitting against that trick you played with Mansur; and now you slumber through it."

"Not I. The devil take this deep-sea-roller of a coach. And when I bargained with thee I had no thought of the inns of the chickens whose dying squeak mingled with the spatter of their fat upon the grill. 'Fore Gad, it's too damned natural."

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What you need is a bit of camp life," said Elliot disapprovingly.

66 What I need is a rattle of the bones at hazard and a bowl of steaming punch.

"I was happy when I met thee,

Fragile me and wanton you,' "

he hummed in the words of a ditty of that day, balanced his hat upon his knees and regarded the Captain from a corner of his eye.

"Now we are fair launched into the God-forsaken country, can you find it in your heart to tell me why you made all that tara-diddle with Mansur a few nights since?"

Captain Elliot did not reply immediately, for he was annoyed. Then he said slowly, as he had that night at White's:

"Once a hound, always a hound."

"And you'd have fought him for a boyish caper," asked Yerington wonderingly, "which I'd clean forgot you dour, unforgiving Scot?"

Elliot turned wrathfully to him.

"But has he forgot? God, man, there are times when I almost lose faith in thee.. I'll warrant I would have

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