have spoken to Lord St. Simon, but it was dreadful hard before
his mother and all those great people. I just made up my mind to
run away and explain afterwards. I hadn't been at the table ten
minutes before I saw Frank out of the window at the other side of
the road. He beckoned to me and then began walking into the Park.
I slipped out, put on my things, and followed him. Some woman
came talking something or other about Lord St. Simon to
me--seemed to me from the little I heard as if he had a little
secret of his own before marriage also--but I managed to get away
from her and soon overtook Frank. We got into a cab together, and
away we drove to some lodgings he had taken in Gordon Square, and
that was my true wedding after all those years of waiting. Frank
had been a prisoner among the Apaches, had escaped, came on to
'Frisco, found that I had given him up for dead and had gone to
England, followed me there, and had come upon me at last on the
very morning of my second wedding."

"I saw it in a paper," explained the American. "It gave the name
and the church but not where the lady lived."

"Then we had a talk as to what we should do, and Frank was all
for openness, but I was so ashamed of it all that I felt as if I
should like to vanish away and never see any of them again--just
sending a line to pa, perhaps, to show him that I was alive. It
was awful to me to think of all those lords and ladies sitting
round that breakfast-table and waiting for me to come back. So
Frank took my wedding-clothes and things and made a bundle of
them, so that I should not be traced, and dropped them away
somewhere where no one could find them. It is likely that we
should have gone on to Paris to-morrow, only that this good