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 diamonds away, we'd have been in a pretty pickle. As it was, I knew he would leave them in the drawing-room, and, so long as they were there, we were not likely to want a railway fare.

It was now about a quarter-past nine o'clock. The morning post had come in, and I was sure there was no letter or telegram from Heresford—a thing I couldn't understand at all. "This man can't be so blind that he doesn't read the meaning of that telegram," I said; and yet it was strange that the morning passed and not a sign of any trouble could we see. Nicky himself, always ready to go up or down in spirits like a thermometer, was half-wild with joy about twelve o'clock, and you could hear his laughter all over the house. Then he went riding with Miss Janet, and when he came back at two o'clock, and there was still no word from Heresford, he looked like a man who had lost twenty of his years in an hour.

I shall never forget that day if I live until I'm a hundred. The times I walked to the lodge gates to see if any one was coming up the road; the starts I got every time the dogs barked and the bells rang. I was that bad by six o'clock that I couldn't sit a minute anywhere; and well as the thing looked, I positively dared not believe in our luck. "It can't be, it can't be," I kept saying to myself; "he must come; he will be here in five minutes, in ten; he will drive up before the clock strikes again." And this went on all the afternoon until six o'clock, the