by some innocent remark of Mabel's. I-I didn't know they were intimate.'

'Oh yes,' said Caffyn; they'll make a tremendous fuss over him. Now look here, my dear fellow, let's talk this over without any confounded sentiment. Here's your wedding at hand, and here's a longlost intimate friend about to turn up in the midst of it. You'd very much prefer him to stay away; there's nothing to be ashamed of in that. I should myself if I were in your shoes. No fellow cares about playing second fiddle at his own wedding. Now, I've got a little suggestion to make. I was going down to Wastwater to-morrow; but I wouldn't much mind waiting another day if I could only get a fellow to come with me. I always liked Holroyd, you know-capital good chap he is; and if you leave me to manage him, I believe I could get him to come. I own I rather funk Wast water all alone at this time of year.'

'He wouldn't go,' said Mark hopelessly.

'He would go there as readily as anywhere else, if you left it to me. I tell you what,' he added, as if the idea had just occurred to him: suppose I go down to Plymouth and catch him there? I don't mind the journey a bit.'

'No,' said Mark, I am going to meet him. I must be the first to see him. After that, if he likes to go away with you, he

can.'

Then you are going down after all!' said Caffyn. What are you going to say to him?'

"That is my affair,' said Mark.

'Oh, I beg pardon; I only meant that if you say anything to him about this wedding, or even let him think the Langtons are in town, I may as well give up any idea of getting him to come away with me. Look here! You might do me a good turn, particularly when you know you won't be sorry to get him off your hands yourself. Tell him you're going abroad in a day or two (that's true-you're going to Switzerland for your honeymoon, you know), and let him think the Langtons are away somewhere on the Continent; it's all for his good, he'll want mountain air and a cheerful companion like me to put him right again. He'll be the first to laugh at an innocent little deception like that.'

But Mark had done with deceptions, as he told himself: 'I shall tell him what I think he ought to know,' he said firmly, and Caffyn, with all his keenness, mistook the purpose in his mind.

I'll take that for an answer,' he said, and I shan't leave

town to-morrow on the chance of his being able to go.' And so, they parted.

Ought I to have let him see that I knew?' Caffyn was thinking when he was alone again. 'No, I don't want to frighten him. I think he will play my game without it.'

Mark went back to the Langtons and dined there. Afterwards he told Mabel privately that he would be obliged to leave town for a day or two on pressing business. There was no mistaking his extreme reluctance to go, and she understood that only the sternest necessity took him away at such a time, trusting him too entirely to ask any questions.

But as they parted she said, 'It's only for two days, Mark, isn't it?'

'Only for two days,' he answered.

'And soon we shall be together-you and I-for all our lives,' she said softly, with a great happiness in her low tones. I ought to be able to give you up for just two days, Mark!'

Before those two days were over, he thought, she might give him up for ever! and the thought that this was possible made it difficult for him to part as if all were well. He went back and passed a sleepless night, thinking over the humiliating task he had set himself. His only chance of keeping Mabel now lay in making a full confession to Holroyd of his perfidy; he would offer a complete restitution in time. He would plead so earnestly that his friend must forgive him, or at least consent to stay his hand for the present; he would humble himself to any extent, if that would keep him from losing Mabel altogether-anything but that. If he lost her now, the thought of the happiness he had missed so narrowly would drive him mad.

It was a miserably cold day when he left Paddington, and he shivered under his rug as he sat in the train; he could hardly bear the cheerful talk of meeting or parting friends at the various stations at which the train stopped. He would have welcomed a collision which would deal him a swift and painless death, and free him from the misery he had brought upon himself; he would have been glad, like the lover in 'The Last Ride together,' although for very different reasons, if the world could end that day, and his guilt be swallowed up in the sum of iniquity. But no collision occurred, and (as it is perhaps unnecessary to add) the universe did not gratify him by dissolving on that occasion; the train brought him safely to the Plymouth platform, and left him there

to face his difficulty alone. It was about six o'clock in the evening, and he lost no time in inquiring at his hotel for the P. and O. agents, and in making his way to their offices up the stony streets, and along a quiet lane over the hill by Hoegate. He was received with courtesy, and told all that he wished to know: the 'Coromandel' was not in yet, would not be in now until after dark-if then; they would send him word if the tender was to go out the next morning, said the agent as he wrote him the necessary order to go on board her. After that Mark went back to the hotel and dined, or rather attempted to dine, in the big coffeeroom by the side of a blazing fire that was powerless to thaw the cold about his heart, and then he retired to the smoking-room, which he had all to himself, and where he sat staring grimly at the leather benches and cold marble-topped tables around him, while he could hear muffled music and applause from the theatre hard by, varied by the click of the balls in the billiard-room at the end of the corridor. Presently the waiter announced a messenger for him, and on going out into the hall he found a man of seafaring appearance who brought him a card, stating that the tender would leave the Millbay Pier at six the next morning, by which time the Coromandel' would most probably be in. Mark went up to his bedroom that night as to a condemned cell; he had dreaded another night of sleepless tossing; sleep came to him, however, merciful and dreamless, as it will sometimes to those in desperate case, but he yielded to it with terror as he felt it coming upon him-for it brought the morning nearer.

CHAPTER XXIX.

ON BOARD THE COROMANDEL.'

VR

T

WAS quite dark the next morning when the hammering of the boots' outside the door roused Mark to a miserable sense of the unwelcome duty before him. He dressed by candlelight, and, groping his way down the silent staircase, hunted about in the shuttered coffee-room for the coat and hat he had left there, and went shivering out into the main street, from which he turned up the hill towards the Hoe. The day had dawned by that time, and the sky was a gloomy grey, varied towards the horizon by gleams of stormy yellow; the prim clean streets were deserted, save by an occasional workman going to his labours with a heavy tramp echoing on the wet flags. Mark went along by terraces of lodginghouses, where the placards of apartments' had an especially forlorn and futile look against the drawn blinds, and from the areas of which the exhalations, confined during the night, rose in perceptible contrast with the fresh morning air. Then he found himself upon the Hoe, with its broad asphalt promenades and rows of hotels and terraces, rain-washed, silent, and cold, and descending the winding series of steps, he made his way to the Millbay Pier, and entered the Custom House gates. Waiting about the wharf was a little knot of people, apparently bound on much the same errand as himself although in far higher spirits. Their cheerfulness (probably a trifle aggravated by the consciousness of being up so early) jarred upon him, and he went on past them to the place where two small steamers were lying.

'One of 'em's agoin' out to the "Coromandel " presently,' said a sailor in answer to his question; you'd better wait till the agent's down, or you may be took out to the wrong ship-for there's two expected, but they ain't neither of 'em in yet. Ah!' as a gun was heard outside, that 'll be the "Coromandel" signallin' now.'

That ain't her,' said another man, who was leaning over the side of one of the tenders, that's the t'other one--the "Emu;" the "Coromandel's " a three-master, she is.'

Tom knows the "Coromandel,”-don't ye, Tom?- Let Tom alone for knowing the "Coromandel!" said the first sailor-a remark which apparently was rich in hidden suggestion, for they both laughed very heartily.

Presently the agent appeared, and Mark, having satisfied himself that there was no danger of being taken out to the wrong vessel (for, much as he dreaded meeting Holroyd, he dreaded missing him even more), went on board one of the tenders, which soon after began to move out into the dull green water. Now that he was committed to the ordeal his terrors rose again; he almost wished that he had made a mistake after all, and was being taken out to meet the wrong P. and O. The horrible fear possessed him that Holroyd might in some way have learned his secret on the voyage home. Suppose, for instance, a fellowpassenger possessed a copy of Illusion,' and chanced to lend it to him-what should he do if his friend were to meet him with a stern and contemptuous repulse, rendering all conciliation out of the question? Tortured by speculations like these, he kept nervously away from the others on board, and paced restlessly up and down near the bows; he saw nothing consciously then, but afterwards every detail of those terrible ten minutes came back to him vividly, down to the lights still hanging in the rigging of the vessels in harbour, and the hoarse cries of the men in a brownsailed lugger gliding past them out to sea. Out by the bar there was a light haze, in the midst of which lay the long black hull of the Coromandel,' and to this the tender worked round in a tedious curve preparatory to lying alongside. As they passed under the stern Mark nerved himself to look amongst the few figures at the gangway for the face he feared-but Holroyd was not amongst them. After several unsuccessful attempts of a Lascar to catch the rope thrown from the tender, accompanied by some remarks in a foreign language on his part which may have been offered in polite excuse for his awkwardness, the rope was secured at length, the tender brought against the vessel's side, and the gangway lashed across. Then followed a short delay, during which the P. and O. captain, in rough-weather costume, conversed with the agent across the rails with a certain condescension.

6

Thick as a hedge outside,' Mark heard him say; 'haven't