After refreshments had been served, Lily Rose went to her bedroom to don her travelling gown, and when the happy couple had driven away amid a shower of rice and shouts from the neighbors, John's carriage drew up. "John," asked Colette, after a happy little moment in his arms, "did you read my note and did you see what the date was?" "Colette, surely it was the dearest love-letter a man ever received. If I could have had it all these dreary months!" "Do you wonder that I feared its falling into strange hands?" "Tell me its history, Colette. How you recovered it, and why you thought it was in the surplice in the first place?" "I wrote it the day after you asked me--you know--" There was another happy disappearance and silence before she resumed: "I was sentimental enough to want to deliver it in an unusual way. I took it to Mrs. Jenkins's house the day your surplice was to be returned to you, and I slipped it inside the pocket. I wanted you to find it there on Sunday morning. I didn't know what to think when you looked at me so oddly that Sunday--yes, I know now that you were wondering at my silence. And when we came home in the fall and I learned from Amarilly that strangers might be reading and laughing at my ardent love-letter, which must have passed through many and alien hands, I was so horrified I couldn't act rational or natural. I was--yes, I will 'fess up, John,-- I was unreasonable, as you said and--No, John! wait until I finish before you--" "You want to know how and where it was found? It seems at the same time your surplice was laundered, a lace waist of mine was at their house. I didn't care for a 'fumigated waist' so, like you, I made Amarilly a present perforce. She laid it away in its wrappings to keep until her wedding day. Out of the goodness of her generous little heart she loaned it to Lily Rose and yesterday, when they were trying it on, Amarilly found my note in the sleeve. Mrs. Jenkins was appealed to and remembered that when the things were ready to be sent home, she found the note on the floor, and supposing it had fallen from the waist slipped it inside and forgot all about it. I decided that it should be delivered in the manner originally planned." "But, Colette," he asked wistfully, a few moments later, "if you had never found it would you have kept me always in suspense and never have given me an answer? I began to hope, that night I called, that you were relenting." "I was, John. Amarilly had been telling me of the Boarder's love for Lily Rose, and it made me lonely for you, and I determined in any event to give you your answer--this answer--to-night. And so I did, and--I think that is all, John." "Not all, Colette." CHAPTER XXV