did. Do you think they meant her, poor child, to be turned out of

her old home penniless? If any harm comes to her, you will be the cause of it. You've treated her as no gentleman would treat a dog. You forced yourself upon her when you thought she had the money, and when you found the money would be yours without her, you turned the cold shoulder and despised and neglected her. And you've driven her away—she, a poor innocent girl who knows nothing of the world's wicked ways—out now without a soul to protect or care for her. Are you going to sit here doing nothing? Isn't there ways of tracing and finding the lost? Don't you mean to do it?"

Stevens gasped for breath.

Dane had listened to her tirade with amused indifference; but once or twice he felt the sting of her tongue. But he was not going to be browbeat by a woman. He answered her very sternly—

"If you weren't in a very hysterical state, Stevens, I should give it to you well for your impertinence and foolishness. I am as vexed as you are at Miss Hartbrook's disappearance. She is behaving like a silly foolish child. We shall doubtless hear from her in a day or two, or from the friends to whom she has gone. Of course, I shall make immediate inquiries for her. Her nerves must be much upset to make her behave so. But as her affianced husband, I consider she has treated me extremely badly. She certainly does want to see more of the world and have her mind broadened. She has secluded herself in this gloomy old house and refused to come about with me till she has got all kinds of delusions and false fancies into her head. I am not going to be cast on one side in such a manner. And when I find her and bring her back here, I shall show her that it is she who has behaved badly and in a most dishonourable and treacherous manner!"

He walked out of the room, leaving a tearful Stevens gazing after him in a dumbfounded fashion. He did in his own way try to trace Damaris, but days passed, and he was entirely unsuccessful.

He thought that she was swallowed up in the great metropolis. Neither he nor Stevens had any idea that she had gone out of London.

Stevens knew that she had no friends, and every day she would roam up and down the streets and parks, hoping to come across her.

Then Dane suddenly paid off all the servants, Stevens amongst them, emptied the house of all that was in it and shut it up, went to Paris with Mrs. Welbeck and her daughters, and never mentioned Damaris by name.

Stevens went home, comforting herself with Damaris's promise to write to her there.

Six weeks afterwards, Dane's approaching marriage with the youngest Miss Welbeck was announced in the "Morning Post."

Meanwhile, Damaris was pursuing her own plans with much deliberation of purpose.

As her train steamed out of Paddington station, she felt she was on the threshold of a new life. She was thrilled to her finger tips with the excitement of the moment.

"Now I know what a runaway feels like," she said to herself, as she gazed out at the country to which she was so swiftly passing. "I ought to feel frightened and depressed at my uncertain future. I don't even know where I am going to sleep to-night. But there are inns in every village, I know, and there must be one in Marley. How little I thought I should be so delighted to get away from Dane! When first he came, I admired him so much; but lately he has felt like a regular old man of the sea on my shoulders. He looks as handsome as ever he did, but it's his mind that is so sordid and mean. I felt contaminated by it when I talked to him."

Then she began to muse upon her plans.

Damaris had determined to seek out her relatives. She had made a note of the address on the old letters she had found in her mother's desk, and she was going down to the village of Marley to see if any of the family were still left in the neighbourhood. She did not intend to make herself known to them directly. She hoped, if her grandfather were dead, that her mother's young sister might be still living. She was her hope, for Damaris felt that she would be received by her for her mother's sake.

In a little bag tied round her neck and secreted under her dress was the whole of her property in bank notes. She was not an inefficient housekeeper, and she calculated that she could live for many months in a quiet way upon what she possessed. Not a shade of anxiety for the future dimmed her outlook.

As she sat back in a third-class railway carriage, her grey eyes were full of dreams: her lips closed with determined resolve. And her heart was beating unevenly, for the spirit of adventure had seized hold of her, and there was the excitement of a strange unknown future before her. The realisation that for the first time in her life she was her own mistress, and a free agent, brought a wonderful rest and relief to her soul.

"I may make mistakes," she was assuring herself; "but I shall have no one to scold me if I do. I am responsible to none. It is new life to me; and how exquisite it will be to wander through the country at my own free will, to have turned my back for once and all upon London's grimy stuffy streets and houses! I will never go back there again if I can help it!"