"
"Who do you think she is?"
"Who?"
"_Ethel Orne_!"
"Ethel _Orne_!" cried Dacres, as the whole truth flashed on his mind.
"What a devil of a jumble every thing has been getting into!--By
Heaven, dear boy, I congratulate you from the bottom of my soul!"
And he wrung Hawbury's hand as though all his soul was in that grasp.
But all this could not satisfy the impatience of the Baron. This was
all very well in its way, merely as an episode; but he was waiting for
the chief incident of the piece, and the chief incident was delaying
very unaccountably.
So he strode up and down, and he fretted and he fumed and he chafed,
and the trumpeter kept blowing away.
Until at last--
Just before his eyes--
Up there on the top of the bank, not far from where Dacres and Mrs.
Willoughby had made their appearance, the Baron caught sight of a
tall, lank, slim figure, clothed in rusty black, whose thin and
leathery face, rising above a white neck-tie, peered solemnly yet
interrogatively through the bushes; while just behind him the Baron
caught a glimpse of the flutter of a woman's dress.
[Illustration: "HE GAVE A LOUD CRY OF JOY, AND THEN SPRANG UP THE
BANK."]
He gave a loud cry of joy, and then sprang up the bank.
* * * * *
But over that meeting I think we had better draw a veil.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
ASTONISHING WAY OF CONCLUDING AN ADVENTURE.
The meeting between the Baron and Minnie gave a new shock to poor Mrs.
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