The letters he had to write could go to blazes--of course he meant to spend each of the precious minutes that remained in the next few hours with Bubbles!
"You'll be able to escort old Miss Burnaby to town, for Helen's staying on," went on Blanche.
"Helen staying on?" exclaimed Bubbles. "I'm glad of that! Oh, and Sir Lyon's staying on, too?"
She suddenly gave one of her funny, eerie little chuckles; but she made no other comment.
"Yes," called out Blanche. "And Dr. Panton's going--so I've a good many little things to see to."
Bill sprang to the door, and opened it for her.
As it shut she heard Bubbles' voice, and it was a voice Blanche Farrow hardly knew. "Are you really sorry you're going away from your little kid, Bill?"
Blanche sighed sharply. After all, so she told herself, there is something to be said for love's young dream.
It marked ten minutes to twelve on the tower of the ancient chantry church of Darnaston as Blanche Farrow walked across the village green and past the group of thatched cottages composing the pretty hamlet which looks so small compared with its noble house of God. But, though she was early, the man she was to meet was evidently already there, for a big, mud-stained motor-car was drawn up in the lane which runs to the left of the church.
Feeling more and more apprehensive, she knew not of what, she walked up the path between the graves, and then suddenly she saw Mark Gifford--his spare, still active-looking figure framed in the stone porch, his plain, but pleasant, intelligent-looking face full of a grave welcome.
He stepped out of the porch and gripped her hand in silence.
She felt that he was deeply stirred, stirred as she had never known him to be--excepting, perhaps, on that occasion, years and years ago, when he had first asked her to be his wife.
Still holding her hand in that strong grasp, he drew her within the porch. "I'm so grateful to you for having come," he said. "I hope you didn't think what I did very odd?"
She was trying to smile--to be her usual composed self.
"I couldn't come to Wyndfell Hall," he said abruptly, "for a reason which you will soon know. But I had to see you, and, by a bit of luck, I suddenly remembered this splendid old church. I passed by here once on a walking tour, years and years ago. It's the sort of place people come a long way to see; so, if we are found here together--well, we might have met by accident."