Laid up in Lavender. Stanley John Weyman

asked on a sudden, speaking fast and eagerly, "is it true, I want to ask you, is it true that that led you to resign?"

      Naturally he was startled, and he showed that he was. She was the last person who should have put that question to him, but his long training in self-control stood him in good stead.

      "Well, yes," he said quietly.

      It was better, he thought, indeed it was only right, that she should know what she had done. But he did not look at her.

      "Was it only that?" she asked again.

      This time he weighed his answer. He thought her persistency odd. But again he assented.

      "Yes," he said gravely. "Only that, I think. But for that I should have remained in--with Lord Pilgrimstone of course. Perhaps things are better as they are, my dear."

      Lady Betty sprang from her seat with all her old vivacity. "Well!" she cried, "well, I am sure! Then why, I should like to know, did Mr. Atlay tell me that my letter to the Times had something to do with it!"

      "Did not say so," quoth Sir Horace. "Absurd!"

      "Yes, he did," cried Lady Betty, so fiercely that the rash speaker, who had returned to his boots, fairly shook in them. "You were not there! How do you know?"

      "Don't know," Sir Horace admitted, meekly.

      "But stay, stay a moment!" Mr. Stafford said, getting in a word with difficulty. It was strange if his wife could talk so calmly of her misdeeds, and before a third party too. "What letter to the Times did Atlay mean?"

      "My letter about the Women's League," she explained earnestly. "You did not see it? No, I thought not. But Mr. Atlay would have it that you did, and that it had something to do with your going out. Horace told me at the time that I ought not to send it without consulting you. But I did, because you said you could not be bothered with it--I mean you said you were busy, Stafford. And so I thought I would ask if it had done any harm, and Mr. Atlay---- What is the matter?" she cried, breaking off sharply at sight of the change in her husband's face. "Did it do harm?"

      "No, no," he answered. "Only I never heard of this letter before. What made you write it?"

      Lady Betty coloured violently, and became on a sudden very shy--like most young authors. "Well," she said, "I wanted to be in the--in the swim with you, don't you know."

      Mr. Stafford murmured, "Oh!"

      Thanks to his talk with Atlay he read the secret of that sudden shyness. And confusion poured over him more and more. It caused him to give way to impulse in a manner which a moment's reflection would have led him to avoid.

      "Then it was not you," he exclaimed unwarily, "who sent Pilgrimstone's terms to the Times?"

      "I?" she exclaimed in an indescribable tone, and with eyes like saucers. "I?" she repeated.

      "Gad!" cried Sir Horace; and he looked about for a way of escape.

      "I?" she continued, struggling between wrath and wonder. "I betray you to the Times! And you thought so, Stafford?"

      There was silence in the room for a long moment during which the cool statesman, the hard man of the world, did not know where to turn his eyes. "There were circumstances--several circumstances," Mr. Stafford muttered at last, "which made--which forced me to think so."

      "And Mr. Atlay thought so?" she asked. He nodded. "Oh, that tame cat!" she cried, her eyes flashing.

      Then she seemed to meditate, while her husband gazed at her, a prey to conflicting emotions, and Sir Horace made himself as small as possible. "I see," she continued in a different tone. "Only--only if you thought that, why did you never say anything? Why did you not scold me, beat me, Stafford? I do not--I do not understand."

      "I thought," he explained in despair--he had so mismanaged matters--"that perhaps I had left you--out of the swim, as you call it, Betty. That I had not treated you very well, and after all it might be my own fault."

      "And you said nothing! You intended to say nothing?" He nodded.

      "Gad!" cried Sir Horace very softly.

      But Lady Betty said nothing. She turned after a long look at her husband, and went out of the room, her eyes wet with tears. The two men heard her pause a moment on the landing, and then go upstairs and shut her door. But her foot, even to their gross ears, seemed to touch the stairs as if it loved them, and there was a happy lingering in the slamming of the door.

      They looked, when she had left them, anywhere but at one another. Sir Horace sought inspiration in his boots, and presently found it. "Wonder who did it, then?" he burst out at last.

      "Ah! I wonder," replied the ex-minister, descending at a bound from the cloudland to which his thoughts had borne him. "I never pushed the inquiry; you know why now. But they should be able to enlighten us at the Times office. We could learn in whose handwriting the copy was, at any rate. It is not well to have spies about us."

      "I can tell you in whose handwriting they say it was," Sir Horace said bluntly.

      "In whose?"

      "In Atlay's."

      Mr. Stafford did not look surprised. Instead of answering he thought. As a result of which he presently left the room in silence. When he came back he had a copy of the Times in his hand, and his face wore a look of perplexity. "I have read the riddle," he said, "and yet it is a riddle to me still. I never found time to read the report of my speech at the Club. It occurred to me to look at it now. It is full of errors; so full that it is clear the printer had not the corrected proof Atlay prepared. Therefore I conclude that Atlay's copy of the terms went to the Times instead of the speech. But how was the mistake made?"

      "That is the question."

      It happened that the private secretary came into the room at this juncture. "Atlay," Mr. Stafford said at once, "I want you. Carry your mind back a week--to this day week. Are you sure that you sent the report of my speech at the Club to the Times?"

      "Am I sure?" the other replied confidently, nothing daunted by being so abruptly challenged. "I am quite sure I did, sir. I remember the circumstances. I found the report--it was type-written you remember--lying on the blotting-pad when I came down before dinner. I slipped it into an envelope, and put it in the box. I can see myself doing it now."

      "But how do you know that it was the report you put in the envelope?"

      "You had indorsed it 'Corrected speech.--W. Stafford,'" Atlay replied triumphantly.

      "Ah!" Mr. Stafford said, dropping his hands and eyes and sitting down suddenly, "I remember! My wife came in, and--yes, my wife came in."

THE SURGEON'S GUEST

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THE SURGEON'S GUEST

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I.

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      "To be content," said the carrier, "that is half the battle. If I have said it to one, I have said it to a hundred. You be content," says I, "and you will be all right."

      For the first time, though they had plodded on a mile together, the tall gentleman turned his eyes from the sombre moorland which stretched away on either side of the road, and looked at his companion. There had been something strange in the preoccupation of his thoughts