‘First stop Willesden,’ yelled the porters.

‘Say, conductor,’ said Twemlow sharply, catching the luncheon-car attendant by the sleeve, ’you’ve got two seats reserved for me—­Twemlow?’

‘Twemlow?  Yes, sir.’

‘Come along,’ he said, ‘come along.’

The girls kissed at the steps of the car:  ‘Good-bye.’

‘Well, good-bye all!’ said Twemlow.  ’I hope to see you again some time.  Say next fall.’

‘You surely aren’t——­’ Leonora began.

‘Yes,’ he resumed quickly, ‘I sail Saturday.  Must get back.’

‘Oh, Mr. Twemlow!’ Ethel and Milly complained together.

Rose was standing on the steps.  Leonora leaned and kissed the pale girl madly, pressing her lips into Rose’s cheek.  Then she shook hands with Arthur Twemlow.

‘Good-bye!’ she murmured.

‘I guess I shall write to you,’ he said jauntily, addressing all three of them; and Ethel and Milly enthusiastically replied:  ‘Oh, do!’

The travellers penetrated into the car, and reappeared at a window, one on either side of a table covered with a white cloth and laid for two persons.

‘Oh, don’t I wish I was going!’ Milly exclaimed, perceiving them.

Rose was now flushed with triumph.  She looked at Twemlow, her lips moved, she smiled.  She was a woman in the world.  Then they nodded and waved hands.

The guard unfurled his green flag, the engine gave a curt, scornful whistle, and lo! the luncheon-car was gliding away from Leonora, Ethel, and Milly!  Lo! the station was empty!

‘I wonder what he will talk to her about,’ thought Leonora.

They had to cross the station by the under-ground passage and wait twenty minutes for a squalid, shambling local train which took them to Shawport, at the foot of the rise to Hillport.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DANCE

About three months after its rendering of Patience, the Bursley Amateur Operatic Society arranged to give a commemorative dance in the very scene of that histrionic triumph.  The fete was to surpass in splendour all previous entertainments of the kind recorded in the annals of the town.  It was talked about for weeks in advance; several dressmakers nearly died of it; and as the day approached the difficulty of getting one’s self invited became extreme.

‘You know, Mrs. Stanway,’ said Harry Burgess when he met Leonora one afternoon in the street, ’we are relying on you to be the best-dressed woman in the place.’

She smiled with a calmness which had in it a touch of gentle cynicism.  ‘You shouldn’t,’ she answered.

‘But you’re coming, aren’t you?’ he inquired with eager concern.  Of late, owing to the capricious frigidity of Millicent’s attitude towards him, he had been much less a frequenter of Leonora’s house, and he was no longer privy to all its doings.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose I shall come.’