“Yes, there was a letter!” faltered Doreen.

She gave a glance round her; seemed to remember suddenly the presence of a third person, for she blushed deeply on meeting the doctor’s eyes; then, without another word, she sprang across the room to the door.

“Where are you going?” cried her father, as he followed her into the hall.

But she did not answer.  The hall-door was closing with a loud clang.

Doreen was not the girl to lose her lover for want of a little energy.  She was fonder of Dudley than people imagined.  There is always an inclination in the general mind to consider that a person of lively temperament is incapable of a deep feeling.  And Mr. Wedmore had only shown a common tendency in believing that his beautiful and brilliant daughter would easily give up the lover whom he considered unworthy of her.  But he was wrong.  Much too high-spirited and too happy in her temperament and surroundings to brood over her lover’s late negligence, she was perhaps too vain to believe that she had lost her hold upon his heart.  At any rate, she liked him too well to give him up in this off-hand fashion without making an effort to discover the reason of his present mysterious conduct.

That letter which he had used as an excuse for his sudden departure had arrived at The Beeches by the afternoon post.  Doreen had seen it with her own eyes; had noted with some natural curiosity that the direction was ill-spelled, ill-written; that the chirography was that of an almost illiterate female correspondent; and that the post-mark showed that it came from the East End of London.  Rather a strange letter for the smart young barrister to receive, perhaps.  And the thought of it made Doreen pause when she had got outside the door on the broad drive between the lawns.

Only for the moment.  The next she was flying across the rougher grass outside the garden among the oaks and the beeches of the park.  She saw no one in front of her, and for a few seconds her heart beat very fast.  She thought she had missed him.

There was no lodge at the park entrance; only a modest wooden gate in the middle of the fence.  Doreen was hesitating whether to go through or to go back, when she saw the figure of Dudley Horne coming toward the gate from the stables.

So she waited.

As he came nearer, she, hidden from his sight by the trunk of an old oak-tree, grew uneasy and shy.  Dark though it was, dimly as she could see him, Doreen felt convinced, from the rapid, steady pace at which he walked, that he was intent upon some set purpose, that he was not driven by pique at her father’s words.

He came quite close to her, so that she saw his face.  A dark-complexioned, strong face it was, clean-shaven, not handsome at all.  But, on the other hand, it was just such a face as women admire; full of character, of ambition, of virility.  Doreen had been debating with herself whether she dared speak to him; but the moment she got a full look at his face, her courage died away.