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“Was it a Carl Bothwick?”

“No; a Miss Macleod, who said that a much better position was in the market in a church where Miss Tucker had influential friends. She was sure that if Miss Tucker returned immediately to sing for the committee she could secure a thousand-dollar salary. We could do nothing but advise her to make the effort, you see.”

“Did she seem determined to go?”

“No; she appeared a little undecided and timid. However, she said frankly that, though she had earned enough in England to pay her steamer passage to America, and a month’s expenses afterward, she could not be certain of continuing to do so much through a London winter. ‘If I only had a little more time to think it out,’ she kept saying, ‘but I haven’t, so I must go!'”

“Where is she now?”

“At her lodgings. The bishop is detained in Bath and I am dining with friends in his stead. I thought you might go and take her to dinner at the Swan, so that she shouldn’t be alone, and then bring her to the palace afterward–if–if all is well.”

“If I have any luck two churches will be lamenting her loss to-morrow morning,” said Fergus gloomily; “but she wouldn’t have consented to go if she cared anything about me!”

“Nonsense, my dear boy! You were away. No self-respecting girl would wire you to come back. She was helpless even if she did care. Here we are! Shall I send a hansom back in half an hour?”

“Twenty-five minutes will do it,” Appleton answered briskly. “You are an angel, dear lady!”

“Keep your blarney! I hope you’ll need it all for somebody else to-night! Good fortune, dear boy!”

VIII

Appleton flung the contents of his portmanteau into his closet, rid himself of the dust of travel, made a quick change, and in less than forty minutes was at the door of Miss Tucker’s lodgings.

She had a little sitting-room on the first floor, and his loud rat-a-tat brought her to the door instead of the parlor-maid.

At the unexpected sight of him she turned pale.

“Why–why, I thought it was the luggage-man. Where did you come from?” she stammered.

“From London, an hour ago. I met Mrs. Kennion on my way from the station.”

“Oh! Then she told you I am going home?”

“Yes, she told me. How could you go to America without saying good-bye, Miss Tommy?”

She flushed and looked perilously near tears.

“I wrote to you this morning as soon as I had decided,” she said. “I don’t like to dart off in this way, you can imagine, but it’s a question of must.”

He did not argue this with her; that was a bridge to be crossed when a better understanding had been reached; so, as if taking the journey as an inexorable fact, he said: “Come out and dine with me somewhere, and let us have a good talk.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m eating now on a tray in my sitting-room,”–and she waved a table napkin she was holding in her hand. “I am rather tired, and Miss Scattergood gave me some bacon and an egg from the nest.”

“Give the bacon to the cat and put back the egg in the nest,” he said coaxingly. “Mrs. Kennion said: ‘Don’t let her eat her last dinner alone. Take her to the Swan.'”

“Oh, I am only in my traveling-clothes and the Swan is full of strangers to-night.”

“The Green Dragon, then, near the cathedral. You look dressed for Buckingham Palace.”

She hesitated a moment, and then melted at the eagerness of his wish. “Well, then, if you’ll wait five minutes.”

“Of course; I’ll go along to the corner and whistle a hansom from the stand. Don’t hurry!”

The mental processes of Miss Thomasina Tucker had been very confused during the excitement of the last twenty-four hours.

That she loved Fergus Appleton she was well aware since the arrival of the cablegram calling her back to America. Up to that time she had fenced with her love–parried it, pricked it, thrust it off, drawn it back, telling herself that she had plenty of time to meet the issue if it came. That Fergus Appleton loved her she was also fairly well convinced, but that fact did not always mean–everything–she told herself, with a pitiful little attempt at worldly wisdom. Perhaps he preferred his liberty to any woman; perhaps he did not want to settle down; perhaps he was engaged to some one whom he didn’t care for now, but would have to marry; perhaps he hadn’t money enough to share with a wife; perhaps he was a flirt–no, she would not admit that for an instant. Anyway, she was alone in the world, and the guardian of her own dignity. If she could have allowed matters to drift along in the heavenly uncertainty of these last days, there would have been no problem; but when she was forced to wake from her delicious dream and fly from everything that held her close and warm, fly during Fergus Appleton’s absence, without his knowledge or consent–that indeed was heart-breaking. And still her pride showed her but the one course. She was alone in the world and without means save those earned by her own exertions. A living income was offered her in America and she must take it or leave it on the instant. She could not telegraph Fergus Appleton in London and acquaint him with her plans, as if they depended on him for solution; she could only write him a warm and friendly good-bye. If he loved her as much as a man ought who loved at all, he had time to follow her to Southampton before her ship sailed. If business kept him from such a hurried journey, he could ask her to marry him in a sixpenny wire, reply paid. If he neither came nor wired, but sent a box of mignonette to the steamer with his card and “Bon voyage” written on it, she would bury something unspeakably dear and precious that had only just been born–bury it, and plant mignonette over it. And she could always sing! Thank Heaven for the gift of song!