"I don't know," wrote Lawrence Cardiff in a postscript to a note to Miss Bell that evening, "that Janet will thank me for forestalling her with such all-important news, but I can't resist the pleasure of telling you that she and Kendal got themselves engaged, without so much as a 'by your leave' to me, this afternoon. The young man shamelessly stayed to dinner, and I am informed that they mean to be married in June. Kendal is full of your portrait; we are to see it to-morrow. I hope he has arranged that we shall have the advantage of comparing it with the original." CHAPTER XXXIV. "Miss Cardiff's in the lib'ry, sir," said the housemaid, opening, the door for Kendal next morning with a smile which he did not find too broadly sympathetic. He went up the stairs two steps at a time, whistling like a schoolboy. "Lady Halifax says," he announced, taking immediate possession of Janet where she stood, and drawing her to a seat beside him on the lounge, "that the least we can do by way of reparation is to arrange our wedding-trip in their society. She declares she will wait any reasonable time; but I assured her delicately that her idea of compensation was a little exaggerated." Janet looked at him with an, absent smile. "Yes, I think so," she said, but her eyes were preoccupied, and the lover in him resented it. "What is it?" he asked. "What has happened, dear?" She looked down at an open letter in her hand, and for a moment said nothing. "I don't know whether I ought to tell you; but it would be a relief." "Can there be anything you ought not to tell me?" he insisted tenderly. "Perhaps, on the other hand, I ought," she said reflectively. "It may help you to a proper definition of my character, and then--you may think less of me. Yes, I think I ought." "Darling, for Heaven's sake don't talk nonsense!" "I had a letter--this letter--a little while ago, from Elfrida Bell." She held it out to him. "Read it." Kendal hesitated and scanned her face. She was smiling now; she had the look of half-amused dismay that might greet an ineffectual blow. He took the letter. "If it is from Miss Bell," he said at a suggestion from his conscience, "I fancy, for some reason, it is not pleasant." "No," she replied, "it is not pleasant." He unfolded the letter, recognizing the characteristic broad margins and the repressed rounded perpendicular hand with its supreme effort after significance, and his thought reflected a tinge of his old amused curiosity. It was only a reflection, and yet it distinctly embodied the idea that he might be on the brink of a further discovery. He glanced at Janet again: her hands were clasped in her lap, and she was looking straight before her with smilingly grave lips and lowered lids, which nevertheless gave him a glimpse of retrospection. He felt the beginnings of indignation, yet he looked back at the letter acquisitively; its interest was intrinsic.