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 fifteen. It has a dining car, and stops at Belpher if signaled.”

“Are you going away, Caroline?” inquired Lord Marshmoreton hopefully.

“I am giving a short talk to the Social Progress League at Lewisham. I shall return to-morrow.”

“Oh!” said Lord Marshmoreton, hope fading from his voice.

“Thank you, Miss Faraday,” said Lady Caroline, “The twelve-fifteen.”

“The motor will be round at a quarter to twelve.”

“Thank you. Oh, by the way, Miss Faraday, will you call to Reggie as you pass and tell him I wish to speak to him?”

Maud had left Reggie by the time Alice Faraday reached him, and that ardent youth was sitting on a stone seat smoking a cigarette and entertaining himself with meditations in which thoughts of Alice competed for precedence with graver reflections connected with the subject of the correct stance for his approach shots. Reggie’s was a troubled spirit these days. He was in love, and he had developed a bad slice with his mid-iron. He was practically a soul in torment.

“Lady Caroline asked me to tell you that she wishes to speak to you, Mr. Byng.”

Reggie leaped from his seat.

“Hullo-ullo-ullo! There you are! I mean to say, what!”

He was conscious, as was his custom in her presence, of a warm, prickly sensation in the small of the back. Some kind of elephantiasis seemed to have attacked his hands and feet, swelling them to enormous proportions. He wished profoundly that he could get rid of