Sam advanced a step or two; a white handkerchief was thrust out at the window, and the driver pulled up suddenly.  Then the face of Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys looked anxiously out.

“Ah! you are there,” she exclaimed with a little cry of relief.  “I have been so afraid.  Have you got it?”

In the moonlight, and that pretty air of timidity on her face, she was more ravishing than ever.  Her voice called as a siren’s; her eyes drew Sam irresistibly.  In a second all his fears, doubts, scruples, were flung to the winds.  He held up the portmanteau, and advanced to the carriage door.

“Here it is.  Geraldine—­”

“Oh! thanks, thanks.  How can I show my thanks?”

The perfume of her hair floated out upon the night with the music of her tone until they both fairly intoxicated him.

He opened the door of the chaise.

“Where shall I stow it?” he asked.

“Here, opposite me; be very careful of it.”

In the darkness he saw a huge bundle of rugs piled by Geraldine’s side.

“Where am I to sit?” he asked, as he bestowed the portmanteau carefully.

He looked up into her face.  The loveliest smile rested on him, for one instant, from those incomparable eyes.  She did not answer, but held out her hand with the grace of a maiden confessing her first passion.  He seized the ungloved fingers, and kissed them.

“Geraldine!”

At this moment a low chuckle issued from the bundle of rugs.  Sam dropped the hand, and started back as if stung.  A hateful thought flashed upon him.

“Moggridge?  But no—­”

He seized his lantern, and turned the slide.  A stream of light shot into the corner of the chaise, and revealed—­the bland face of Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys!

There was an instant of blank dismay.  Then, with a peal of laughter, Geraldine sank back among the cushions.

“Good-night!” said the Honourable Frederic with grim affability; then, popping his head out at the further window, “Drive on, John!”

The post-boy cracked his whip, the horses sprang forward, and Sam, with that pitiless laugh still pealing in his ears, was left standing on the high-road.

In the tumult of the moment, beyond a wild sense of injustice, it is my belief that his brain accomplished little.  He stared dully after the retreating chaise, until it disappeared in the direction of Five Lanes; and then he groaned aloud.

There was a patch of turf, now heavy with dew, beside the sign-post.  Upon this he sat down, and with his elbows on his knees, and head between his hands, strove to still the giddy whirl in his brain.  And as his folly and its bitterness found him out, the poor fool rocked himself, and cursed the day when he was born.  If any one yet doubt that Mr. Moggridge was an inspired singer, let him turn to that sublime aspiration in Sophronia:  a Tragedy—­