“That’s so, is it?” exclaimed the young man, with a yet stranger look on his face.  “You really have no idea where he is?”

“None whatever.  And I particularly want to see him.”

“So do I,” said Mr. Barker, smiling grimly.  “So do several people.  You’ll excuse me, I hope, Mrs. Woolstan.  I knew he was a friend of yours, and thought you might perhaps know more about him than we did in the City.  I mustn’t stay.”

Iris stared at him as he rose.  A vague alarm began to tremble in her mind.

“You don’t mean that anything’s wrong?” she panted.

“We’ll hope not, but it looks queer.”

“Oh!” cried Iris.  “He has money of mine.  He is my trustee.”

“I know that.  Please excuse me; I really mustn’t stay.”

“Oh, but tell me, Mr. Barker!” She clutched at his coat sleeve.  “Is my money in danger?”

“I can’t say, but you certainly ought to look after it.  Get someone to make inquiries at once; that’s my advice.  I really must go.”

He disappeared, leaving Iris motionless in amazement and terror.

CHAPTER XXX

The wedding was to be a very quiet one.  Lashmar would have preferred the civil ceremony, at the table of the registrar, with musty casuals for witnesses; but Iris shrank from this.  It must be at a church, and with a few friends looking on, or surely people would gossip.  Had he been marrying an heiress, Dyce would have called for pomp and circumstance, with portraits in the fashion papers, and every form of advertisement which society has contrived.  As it was, he desired to slink through the inevitable.  He was ashamed; he was confounded; and only did not declare it.  To the very eve of the wedding-day, his mind ferreted elusive hopes.  Had men and gods utterly forsaken him?  In solitude, he groaned and gnashed his teeth.  And no deliverance came.

Reaction made him at times the fervent lover, and these interludes supported Iris’s courage.  “Let it once be over!” she kept saying to herself.  She trusted in her love and in her womanhood.

“At all events,” cried the bridegroom, “we needn’t go through the foolery of running away to hide ourselves.  It’s only waste of money.”

But Iris pleaded for the honeymoon. people would think it so strange if they went straight from church to their home at West Hampstead.  And would not a few autumn weeks of Devon be delightful?  Again he yielded.

The vicar of Alverholme and his wife, when satisfied that Dyce’s betrothed was a respectable person, consented to be present at the marriage.  Not easily did Mrs. Lashmar digest her bitter disappointment, which came so close upon that of Dyce’s defeat at Hollingford; but she was a practical woman, and, in the state of things at Alverholme, six hundred a year seemed to her not altogether to be despised.

“My fear was,” she remarked one day to her husband, “that Dyce would be tempted to marry money.  I respect him for the choice he has made; it shows character.”