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 Fane-Crichton, and who was a Scottish peer besides, and were at times very miserable and very happy and really for their ages (which are the very best ages for that purpose) passionately in love with each other.

So he left her in the sweet, shadowy fragrance of the early evening, standing among the tree trunks with her arms outstretched to him, a brave smile on her lips, trying to keep back her tears,—a slender, wistful figure in a white frock that did not quite reach to the top of her shoes, her hair in rippling golden torrents blown toward him over her shoulders by a soft caressing breeze that bore a quivering “Good-by, Micky dear!” to his yearning ears.

Then, with a heart excitedly thumping and pumping a strange and mysterious exuberance all through his slender body, Micky packed a hand-bag, and, without saying as much as good-by to the vicar, walked four miles to the station and caught the 8.43 for Liverpool. For though he was nineteen, he did not know what was right and proper or to be expected of a mere son of a second son. Incidentally he earned in his left-hand breast pocket a cabinet photograph of his Lady of the Order of St.