But suddenly silence seemed undesirable to Ferris. He began to wish that she would say something-move, give him a chance to speak or perform some slight service for her. On they sped without pause or stop, through tunnels, over bridges, through cities without slowing up by so much as a hair'sbreadth, under the shadow of mighty cathedrals, past stately country places and tenderly beautiful ruins.

Ferris was beginning to wonder gloomily if nothing would ever happen, if the train was scheduled to shoot through England like a meteor, when suddenly he felt it slowing down and in another instant it had come pantingly to rest in a large, well-lighted station. He went to the other window of the compartment, and, leaning out, tried to discover a name somewhere on the much-advertised station walls. He could have found out what the place was by simply looking at the railway guide in his pocket, but to do anything so obvious and commonplace as that was not in Ferris's plans. Instead he walked back to the window he had left and, looking at the girl, raised his hat with a certain diffidence not without its charm in such

a man.

"Could you tell me do you know what city this is?" he inquired gravely.

"I'm not sure, but I think it must be 'Bovril'—at least that is all I can see," she returned, glancing at the huge advertisements of that rejuvenating fluid which everywhere met the eye, and dimpling charmingly at her little joke. Ferris couldn't dimple but he smiled appreciatively.

He sat down in his former place opposite her. "They say Americans are the greatest advertisers in the world, but it seems to me the English can beat us at our own game," he said tentatively.

The young girl withdrew her gaze from the station walls and regarded Ferris for the first time. Apparently her inspection reassured her, for she smiled quite cordially upon him, and then as the train slid rapidly out of the station on the shining "metals" a small sign with "Leicester" on it, tucked unobtrusively away in one corner, caught their glance and they both laughed happily like two children. Suddenly it seemed to Ferris that he had known her all his lifeonly he hadn't, and a wave of indignant self

had missed a good deal he assured himself severely and he wasn't likely to make it up in a hurry either apparently, for, after the first pleasant intercourse, the girl had lapsed into somewhat chilling silence and Ferris owned to himself that he hadn't been able to hold her interest. Perhaps she was a little frightened at his evident eagerness to please. As mile after mile of glowing country flashed by them, Ferris grew desperate. Suddenly he bethought him of his railway guide. He drew it from his pocket.

"How stupid of me not to have looked at this!" he said regretfully. "I could have found out easily enough where I was by consulting this time-table," and he spread it out on his knee. "This is an express all right," he went on cheerfully, undaunted by the girl's silence. "How few stops it makes!-Leicester, Leeds, Harrogate, 'the greatest of English spas' according to the guide-book-by the way, I suppose you are going on through to Edinburgh?" he finished carelessly.

The girl waited for an instant, glancing at the outspread railway time-table. "No," she said, "no, I'm not going through. I'm going to stop off at-" she hesitated, slightly embarrassed to be discussing her plans with a stranger-"at Harrogate."

The Englishwoman at the other end of the carriage turned her head sharply, and the young girl spoke to her for the first time. "Don't forget, Willetts," she said earnestly, "that we are to get off at Harrogate. It's the next station but one."

Ferris felt another shock of disappointment. "Confound it!" he reflected dejectedly, "why can't she be going on through?" He gazed at her again for a full minute.

"That's curious," he said quite pleasantly at the end of it. "I'm getting off at Harrogate myself."

A fleck of color rose to the girl's cheeks. "That is curious," she assented rather coldly.

"And yet I don't know," pursued Ferris argumentatively. "The guide-book of Harrogate I was reading the other nightthey hand 'em around to you at my London hotel, and there's another beautiful instance of the fine art of advertising-said there were about forty thousand visitors annually to the baths. So after all it isn't so

strange that you and I should be two of the many thousands."

It looked so easy-the way he put itthat the girl leaned back against the cushions, smiling again.

"Oh, certainly," she murmured reassuredly as the train glided into the Leeds station. "I'm only surprised," she added hastily "because I would never have imagined that you were in need of the cure." "Ah, you never can tell," returned Ferris darkly. "You see there's rheumatism in the family, and rheumatism is something that has to be reckoned with. My grandfather, who was the jolliest old boy imaginable, suffered agonies with it. I remember it all quite well. Perhaps you don't know that certain forms of rheumatism have a little peculiarity of skipping a generation and fastening upon an unsuspecting grandson. I'm the grandson."

The girl smiled sympathetically. "But if there's anything in the cure at Harrogate and the doctors are all enthusiastic over it—I'm going to find it out and get well," went on Ferris, and his blue eyes gazed into the girl's with a melancholy steadfastness of purpose that rather impressed her.

She nodded at him brightly. "That's right," she said, "don't be discouraged that's half the battle!"

Her glance set every nerve in Ferris's body to throbbing. Rheumatism itself couldn't have done it more completely. He smiled at her with a smile that was intended to be cheerful, but that obviously held unwilling despondency in it. Her sympathetic interest was the most delightful thing Ferris had ever encountered and he had no intention of prematurely quenching it. Suddenly he stopped smiling.

"And you?" he queried anxiously. "Don't tell me that anything so serious as rheumatism has brought you to Harrogate!" The girl shook her head slowly. "Oh, no," she said. "It's not rheumatism-it's -why, here we are!" she exclaimed, breaking off in the middle of the sentence and looking out of the window. She turned briskly to the Englishwoman who sat impassively in her corner. "Willetts," she cried, "get our things together. We are at Harrogate," and then she turned to Ferris. "I hope you'll get rid of that wretched rheumatism," she said.

Ferris helped her out carefully and put her into one of the waiting cabs from the King Edward Hotel. "I'm bound to get well. I feel sure this place is going to cure me," he said almost cheerfully. He shut the door of the cab and stood at the open window holding his hat in his hand with that charming air of diffidence that sat so well on him. "What I hope even more than that is that I may have the pleasure of seeing you again."

The girl smiled and the blue eyes were now not at all pathetic, but amused and a little embarrassed. She leaned back against the cushions. "I hope so, too," she said sweetly. "Au revoir."

Ferris watched the cab disappear with a light heart. "Au revoir" had a distinctly encouraging sound. She might have said so many blightingly final things, but instead it had been the inconclusive, pleasant "au revoir."

"At any rate, I've got three weeks," exulted Ferris still looking after the cab. "That guide-book says the cure takes three weeks, so she's bound to stay that long and if she stays longer I'll begin and take it all over again. I'll take fifty cures, if necessary! And now," he said airily to a cabby hovering anxiously near, "take me to a hotel bang up against the King Edward, and be quick about it."

II

THEY met again the next morning in the pretty Crescent Gardens. She was looking quite lovely in a white gown of embroidered linen and a big black hat. Ferris caught sight of her from afar. She was sitting on a shady bench beneath a tree, looking thoughtfully at the tip of her white shoe and to Ferris the English maid was delightfully conspicuous by her absence. The sight of Her (she was already capitalized in his thoughts) sitting there alone, cheered him inexpressibly. He had been rather downcast that morning from the effects of the evening before, spent in sending long, highly imaginative telegrams to Wraymouth and more concise ones to the bewildered Benson left in London to attend to some commissions and innocently expecting to join Ferris in Edinburgh the next day. Wraymouth and Benson off his mind he had devoted the rest of the evening to studying the Har

rogate Guide-Book in the hotel smokingroom. The results were anything but soothing and he asked himself indignantly why he had been such an idiot as to choose rheumatism when he could just as easily have had anything else something romantic and appealing like "Number 4, Nervous Exhaustion from Worry and Overwork," or even "Number 7, Chronic Bronchitis and Certain Forms of Consumption." The "cure" for rheumatism, Ferris observed, according to the inexorable guide-book, was particularly unpleasant, and before his mental eye the future stretched miserably away, beclouded by the appalling fumes of sulphuretted hydrogen.

"There's always something to be thankful for, though," murmured Ferris, reading down the list of "Diseases Benefited by Harrogate." "Thank the Lord I didn't settle on 'Number 2, Disorders of the Liver and Stomach'-that would have been disgusting!"

Between gusts of self-pity and condemnation Ferris was racked by doubts as to whether he would see her soon and whether she would be cordial to him or freezingly polite. There was something in her behavior of the day before which had left it tantalizingly uncertain as to how she might bear herself toward him. But here she was and she was even smiling a little at him as he came up. Decidedly things looked more cheerful by morning.

Ferris stood before her, hat in hand. He made a very pleasant picture as he stood there his shoulders looked very broad and his hair a very nice shade of brown in the morning sunlight, and his eyes and skin noticeably clear and fresh.

"Have you had your morning glass?" he asked smiling and throwing out a hand toward the Royal Pump Room.

The girl shook her head. "No," she said gloomily. "You see," she went on more brightly, "I haven't consulted a physician yet and they won't serve you the waters without a physician's prescription."

"Of course not," said Ferris eagerly. "I wasn't able to get up enough courage either to go to a doctor yesterday."

"Well, it wasn't exactly courage I lacked-" said the girl and then she stopped. "I suppose I must go to one this afternoon," she added after an instant's hesitation.

"That's right-better get it over with. I'll muster up my nerve too—we can't begin too soon to take this wonderful cure," said Ferris earnestly.

"I wonder if I shall have to drink that frightful sulphur water?" queried the girl with a little shudder.

"I shouldn't wonder," said Ferris despondently, "everybody has to-it's the prize stunt here, I'm told. I caught a whiff of it as I came by just now and it pretty near bowled me over. I used to go in for running when I was at college, and when I caught that celestial odor it was all I could do to keep from sprinting over here in cinder-track form."

The girl laughed. "I'm afraid your clothes aren't just right for sprinting," she said.

"They aren't," said Ferris. "That was the only thing that kept me down to a walk."

"That and your rheumatism-don't forget that," said the girl.

"And my rheumatism, of course," assented Ferris hurriedly.

"It has developed since you left college?" she asked solicitously.

"It has developed very recently," said Ferris impressively. "There are times when I'm feeling pretty well-like this morning, for example-when I almost forget it." He looked anxiously around at the thinning crowd. "I say-everybody's going back to the pump room for the second glass. Don't you think it would be rather fun to stroll past and see them taking it? They make such awful faces. It's rather amusing when one doesn't have to drink it one's self."

The girl rose. "That's a great idea," she declared; "this may be our last day of grace. To-morrow morning you and I may be making faces, too." She raised her white parasol and turned to go.

"Wait a moment," said Ferris blushing a little beneath his clear skin. "Before I ask a favor of you, I would like to introduce myself. I looked over all the hotel registers last night hoping to find some friend here who might vouch for me, but incredible as it sounds, you and I seem to be the only Americans in this place."

For a second the girl hesitated and then she held out her hand with sweet frank

ness.

If Ferris had any lingering doubts that she was adorable they vanished then and there. He would have liked to fall on his knees before her, only he hated to be conspicuous and he thought that might attract attention. So, instead, he handed her his card.

She took it and read thereon, "Mr. Thomas Haven Ferris, University Club, New York City."

"Oh," she said, smiling brilliantly, "I think I must have heard my cousin, Harry Arnold, speak of you."

A gleam of intuition illuminated Ferris's bewildered brain.

"It isn't possible you are Mrs. Archie Channing?"

"Yes," she said.

"Not Edith Channing?" he insisted. "But I am-Edith Channing," she averred still smiling.

Ferris couldn't take his eyes off her. So this was beautiful Edith Channing whose exVOL. L.-8

to him-this was the lovely young woman whom a mercenary aunt had married off at twenty to Archie Channing, a man rather more than less of a brute, and who had fortunately been killed in a motor accident near Tours six months after his marriage. Not even his chauffeur had mourned him, and his young widow was popularly supposed, by those who understood the situation, to be hiding her heart-felt relief rather than her grief, in quiet places along the French Riviera.

While Ferris was thinking these thoughts the girl was talking

"I don't think I was ever before in a place where I was one of two solitary representatives of our great country. It really is rather incredible."

"Incredibly delightful, I call it," said Ferris still gazing at her, and together they strolled past the musicians' stand and out into the thronged street and so up to the Royal Pump Room.

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