The letter covered wide ground. It went back to their first wonderful meeting, and recalled childish conversations which Peggy thought she had forgotten. It told of knightly dreams, and of the Lady whom the Knight was one day to meet and marry--not realising that he had met her already. After that came more recent history--the second meeting, and the rapturous convalescence at Tite Street. The black months that followed the tragedy on Chelsea Embankment were sketched very lightly. Finally came the story of the momentous voyage upon the Bosphorus, and the race home. The letter closed with a passage which need not be set down here. This is in the main a frivolous narrative; and there are certain inner rooms in the human heart, from the threshold of which self-respecting frivolity draws back with decent reverence. * * * * * The clock struck two. Simultaneously the outer door of the flat opened with the rattle of a latchkey; and next moment Timothy burst into the room. Peggy was curled up in the big armchair before the fire, apparently half asleep. "That you, Timmy?" she enquired. "Yes--dearest!" replied Timothy. Inflated with the enormous pride of possession, he leaned over the back of the chair and gazed fondly down upon his prospective bride. "Don't bother me just now," said Peggy. "I'm rather sleepy." "Darling!" responded the infatuated Timothy. "Stop blowing on the top of my hand, and help yourself to a cigarette, there's a good child," suggested the darling soothingly. Timothy obeyed, a trifle dashed. "I don't think, little girl," he remarked, lighting the cigarette, "that that is _quite_ the way in which a man expects to be greeted by his _fiancée_." "His what?" asked Peggy. "His--well, dash it all, Peggy," exclaimed Timothy impatiently,--he was naturally somewhat tightly strung up to-night,--"don't be a little pig. Here I come hareing along from the dance in search of you, as full of beans as--as--as a--" "Beanpod?" suggested Peggy helpfully. "No! Yes! All right! Beanpod, if you like!" cried the sorely tried youth. "But give a fellow a chance. As I say, here I come, red-hot on your track, just overflowing with--well, I can't describe it--and you greet me as if I were a Rural Dean." "I should never dream of addressing a Rural Dean as 'Timmy,' Timmy," Peggy replied. "Well, you know what I mean," insisted Timothy, not in the least appeased by this soft answer. "Just think. We have both been passing through the greatest crisis of our lives--the most thrilling moment of our joint existence--" "Have we?" asked Peggy in simple wonder. "I didn't know." Her incensed swain, grappling heroically with his feelings, began to stride about the room. "Peggy," he said in a stern voice, "let us understand one another clearly." For reply, the unfeeling Miss Falconer rose to her feet and struck an attitude.