and he had put himself in the hands of a patronizing lady in an outfitting establishment, and procured her a small stock of necessaries.  He had received his pay, and not long since a liberal cheque from Lord Bromley; so the “sinews of war” were not wanting for the present.  They drove straight from the register office to the station, and were in the train and far on their journey before Bluebell had the least idea where they were going to; indeed, if she had known, she would scarcely have been wiser, all places in England being equally strange to her.

Dutton, rapturously in love, now that his schemes were successful, was in a state of exulting happiness almost overwhelming to Bluebell, secretly oppressed with a sense of the irrevocable.  She even caught herself, when they stopped at stations, wishing that some one would get in.  Very different was the first-class carriage from the long cars, containing sixty or seventy persons, that she had previously travelled in.  But yet there were four vacant seats, which in spite of the rush for places, continued unoccupied.  Now and then their door was hastily clutched by some passenger, but a guard seemed invariably to turn up and bear the individual away to another carriage.  About three o’clock they stopped at a very small station, where only one or two persons got out.

“Here we are, Bluebell,” cried Harry, grasping rugs, sticks, and umbrellas, and throwing them to the porter.

She sprang up and looked around with intense interest.  They were nearing her first pied-a-terre as a married woman.  But the journey was not yet ended, and they transferred themselves to a fly, in which an old grey horse waited sleepily.

“Lucky I thought of ordering it,” said Harry; “it is the only one here, of course.”

“Harry!” cried Bluebell, rubbing her eyes, as if only just thoroughly awake, “have you got a house?  Where in the world are we going to?”

“I couldn’t think why you didn’t ask that before, you little fatalist, taking it all in such a predestined way.  I hope you don’t think it a case of the Lord of Burleigh over again?  It is only a cottage, Bluebell; but I think it is comfortable, and one mercy is no one will be able to find us here!”

The extreme advantage of this isolation scarcely seemed so apparent to her; and as the above sentence was the only connected or rational one Harry gave utterance to, conversation, properly so called, was nil during the drive.  After skirting a hanging wood, and passing some water meadows, where red Herefordshire cows with white faces grazed under the low wintry sky, they drove through a primitive village, and, turning down a bye-road, drew up at a queer gabled cottage.  It was very picturesque and odd-looking, and Harry, during his last leave home, had spent a night there on a visit to an artist friend, who was making sketches in the neighbourhood.

Its proprietor, a carpenter, sometimes lived in it, and sometimes was able to let it to gentlemen coming down to fish in the river.  On receiving Dutton’s telegram, he and his wife, who had given up all hopes of letting it for the winter, gladly laid down their best carpets, brought out their summer chintzes, and arranged everything in apple-pie order, for the cottage was taken for a month certain.