glowed yellow and warm. It was the first time Hoopdriver bad

dared the mysteries of a 'first-class' hotel.' But that night he
was in the mood to dare anything.

"So you found your Young Lady at last," said the ostler of the
Red Hotel; for it chanced he was one of those of whom Hoopdriver

had made inquiries in the afternoon.
"Quite a misunderstanding," said Hoopdriver, with splendid

readiness. "My sister had gone to Bognor But I brought her back
here. I've took a fancy to this place. And the moonlight's simply

dee-vine."
"We've had supper, thenks, and we're tired," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"I suppose you won't take anything,--Jessie?"
The glory of having her, even as a sister! and to call her Jessie

like that! But he carried it off splendidly, as he felt himself
bound to admit. "Good-night, Sis," he said, "and pleasant dreams.

I'll just 'ave a look at this paper before I turn in." But this
was living indeed! he told himself.

So gallantly did Mr. Hoopdriver comport himself up to the very
edge of the Most Wonderful Day of all. It had begun early, you

will remember, with a vigil in a little sweetstuff shop next door
to the Angel at Midhurst. But to think of all the things that had

happened since then! He caught himself in the middle of a yawn,
pulled out his watch, saw the time was halfpast eleven, and

marched off, with a fine sense of heroism, bedward.
THE SURBITON INTERLUDE

XXVI
And here, thanks to the gloriousinstitution of sleep, comes a

break in the narrative again. These absurd young people are
safely tucked away now, their heads full of glowing nonsense,

indeed, but the course of events at any rate is safe from any
fresh developments through their activities for the next eight

hours or more. They are both sleeping healthily you will perhaps
be astonished to hear. Here is the girl--what girls are coming to

nowadays only Mrs. Lynn Linton can tell!--in company with an
absolute stranger, of low extraction and uncertain accent,

unchaperoned and unabashed; indeed, now she fancies she is safe,
she is, if anything, a little proud of her own share in these

transactions. Then this Mr. Hoopdriver of yours, roseate idiot
that he is! is in illegal possession of a stolenbicycle, a

stolen young lady, and two stolen names, established with them in
an hotel that is quite beyond his means, and immensely proud of

himself in a somnolent way for these incomparable follies. There
are occasions when a moralising novelist can merely wring his

hands and leave matters to take their course. For all Hoopdriver
knows or cares he may be locked up the very first thing to-morrow

morning for the rape of the cycle. Then in Bognor, let alone that
melancholy vestige, Bechamel (with whom our dealings are, thank

Goodness! over), there is a Coffee Tavern with a steak Mr.
Hoopdriver ordered, done to a cinder long ago, his American-cloth

parcel in a bedroom, and his own proper bicycle, by way of
guarantee, carefully locked up in the hayloft. To-morrow he will

be a Mystery, and they will be looking for his body along the sea
front. And so far we have never given a glance at the desolate

home in Surbiton, familiar to you no doubt through the medium of
illustrated interviews, where the unhappystepmother--

That stepmother, it must be explained, is quite well known to
you. That is a little surprise I have prepared for you. She is

'Thomas Plantagenet,' the gifted authoress of that witty and
daring book, "A Soul Untrammelled," and quite an excellent woman

in her way,--only it is such a crooked way. Her real name is
Milton. She is a widow and a charming one, only ten years older

than Jessie, and she is always careful to dedicate her more
daring works to the 'sacred memory of my husband' to show that

there's nothing personal, you know, in the matter. Considering
her literaryreputation (she was always speaking of herself as

one I martyred for truth,' because the critics advertised her
written indecorums in column long 'slates'),--considering her

literaryreputation, I say, she was one of the most respectable
women it is possible to imagine. She furnished correctly, dressed

correctly, had severe notions of whom she might meet, went to
church, and even at times took the sacrament in some esoteric

spirit. And Jessie she brought up so carefully that she never
even let her read "A Soul Untrammelled." Which, therefore,

naturally enough, Jessie did, and went on from that to a feast of
advanced literature. Mrs. Milton not only brought up Jessie

carefully, but very slowly, so that at seventeen she was still a
clever schoolgirl (as you have seen her) and quite in the

background of the little literarycircle of unimportant
celebrities which 'Thomas Plantagenet' adorned. Mrs. Milton knew

Bechamel's reputation of being a dangerous man; but then bad men
are not bad women, and she let him come to her house to show she

was not afraid--she took no account of Jessie. When the elopement
came, therefore, it was a double disappointment to her, for she

perceived his hand by a kind of instinct. She did the correct
thing. The correct thing, as you know, is to take hansom cabs,

regardless of expense, and weep and say you do not know WHAT to
do, round the circle of your confidential friends. She could not

have ridden nor wept more had Jessie been her own daughter--she
showed the properest spirit. And she not only showed it, but felt

it.
Mrs. Milton, as a successful little authoress and still more

successful widow of thirty-two,--"Thomas Plantagenet is a
charming woman," her reviewers used to write invariably, even if

they spoke ill of her,--found the steady growth of Jessie into
womanhood an unmitigated nuisance and had been willing enough to

keep her in the background. And Jessie--who had started this
intercourse at fourteen with abstract objections to

stepmothers--had been active enough in resenting this. Increasing
rivalry and antagonism had sprung up between them, until they

could engender quite a vivid hatred from a dropped hairpin or the
cutting of a book with a sharpened knife. There is very little

deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our
selfishness gives much the same results indeed, but in the

ethical laboratory it shows a different nature. And when the
disaster came, Mrs. Milton's remorse for their gradual loss of

sympathy and her share in the losing of it, was genuine enough.
You may imagine the comfort she got from her friends, and how

West Kensington and Notting Hill and Hampstead, the literary
suburbs, those decent penitentiaries of a once Bohemian calling,

hummed with the business, Her 'Men'--as a charmingliterary lady
she had, of course, an organised corps--were immensely excited,

and were pathetic" target="_blank" title="a.同情的，有同情心的">sympathetic; helpfully energetic, suggestive, alert, as
their ideals of their various dispositions required them to be.

"Any news of Jessie?" was the patheticopening of a dozen
melancholy but interesting conversations. To her Men she was not

perhaps so damp as she was to her women friends, but in a quiet
way she was even more touching. For three days, Wednesday that

is, Thursday, and Friday, nothing was heard of the fugitives. It
was known that Jessie, wearing a patentcostume with buttonup

skirts, and mounted on a diamond frame safety with Dunlops, and a
loofah covered saddle, had ridden forth early in the morning,

taking with her about two pounds seven shillings in money, and a
grey touring case packed, and there, save for a brief note to her

stepmother,--a declaration of independence, it was said, an
assertion of her Ego containing extensive and very annoying

quotations from "A Soul Untrammelled," and giving no definite
intimation of her plans--knowledge ceased. That note was shown to

few, and then only in the strictest confidence.
But on Friday evening late came a breathless Man Friend, Widgery,

a correspondent of hers, who had heard of her trouble among the
first. He had been touring in Sussex,--his knapsack was still on

his back,--and he testified hurriedly that at a place called
Midhurst, in the bar of an hotel called the Angel, he had heard

from a barmaid a vivid account of a Young Lady in Grey.
Descriptions tallied. But who was the man in brown?"The poor,