"I'll tell you what I used to think," said Kate, lashing the pony with considerable vehemence. "I used to think you were a good fellow at heart, though the nonsense had never been taken out of you; that you were only vain and affected on the surface, like lots of you guardsmen, but that there was a man inside the dandy, if one could only get at him. Oh, Captain Vanguard, I'm disappointed in you! If I cared two straws for a fellow, and he did as you've done, I'd never speak to him again! There!"
The whip was again dropped on the pony, and they shaved the wheels of an omnibus to an inch.
"Don't take it so to heart, Kate!" laughed Frank. "If I have deserted you, I'll come back again. You know, Miss Cremorne, that you are the only woman I ever loved, and all that. Fate has been obdurate; but rather would I be torn with wild——"
"Will you be serious?" demanded the fair charioteer, knitting her brows, and looking intensely austere. "Do you know where I am driving you now?"
He was incorrigible.
"To Gretna, I trust, or the Register Office. That's what I should like with you. Let's have it out, Kate. Jump over a broomstick, and the thing's done!"
"I'll tell you where you're going," she said gravely: "I am taking you to see Miss Ross!"
His whole countenance changed; and with all his self-command, he could not disguise how deeply he was agitated.
"Miss Ross!" he stammered. "You have heard from her! You know where she is!"
"I have seen her every day for the last fortnight," was the answer. "Seen her battle and bear up against sorrow, sickness, privation—actual want! Ay, many a day, when you've been sitting down to a dinner of four courses and dessert, that woman and her boy—her boy, Captain Vanguard—have not had enough to eat!"