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immediately with her romantic and suitable plans—she had made up her mind she must be patient and give him time—but this mad, dangerous scheme!—oh, it must be prevented. But how? That was the worst of it. If she could make no impression on him, who could? Hopeless, but unwilling to leave any stone unturned, she prevailed upon Winthrop to argue the point with that tiresome Tony. After their brief and unsatisfactory interview she felt helpless indeed—worried as to Tony’s actual safety, angry at his unreasonableness, chafing against the general contrariness of things. Tony was disturbed too, but very much determined.

That afternoon he let Pamela see that he had quite changed his mind about going back to Trent Stoke. It hurt her, yet in a way she was honestly glad, his aversion to it before had seemed so unnatural; but when he said he hoped she would soon come to Trent Stoke it was rather hard to bear it with a smiling face.

“How queer to think you have never seen it!” she said. “It really is beautiful. You must love it as much as—I did—do. The London house isn’t a place one could get exactly fond of, and The Springs is mostly let—it’s inconvenient, and we never lived there—but Trent Stoke———! I hope you are going back soon.”

“I’m going away to-morrow,” he said, “by Vancouver and Australia. I suppose there will be some identifying to do, but as they’ve waited so long for me they ought to be able to wait a little longer.”

“Australia does seem a roundabout way, though, doesn’t it?”

“Yes; but I have lots of friends there. You see, I spent years in that part of the world, and there are several men I want to hunt up. . . . Will you write to me sometimes, Pamela?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid my letters won’t be very interesting. You won’t know the people I’m writing about.”