"Fanny—will you drive me again from the house?"
She lifted her eyes, twinkling with a little spice of mischief. "I did not drive you before."
"In a manner, yes. Do you know what did drive me?" She had known it at the time; and Gerard read it in her face.
"I see it all," he murmured; "you have been far kinder to me than I deserved. Fanny, let me try and repay you for it."
"Are you sure you would not rather have Alice?" she asked, in her clear-sighted independence.
He shook his head sorrowfully. Alice caught their hands together, and held them between her own, with a mental aspiration for their life's future happiness. Some time back she could not have breathed it in so fervent a spirit: but—as she had said—the present world and its hopes were closing to her.
"But you know, Gerard," cried Lady Frances, in a saucy tone, "if you ever do help yourself to somebody's bracelet in reality, you must not expect me to go to prison with you."
"Yes, I shall," he answered promptly. "A wife must share the fortunes of her husband. She takes him for better—or for worse."
He sealed the compact with a kiss. And there was much rejoicing that day in the house of Colonel Hope.