The phrase sounded vague, and neither Mr. Jinman, nor Mrs. Spicer, nor the coachman (who had dropped in to tea and toast and a poached egg or two in the housekeeper’s room) had any clear idea of what Mowser meant, except that it was something ill-natured. On that point there was no room to doubt. Another week wore on, the second after the ball, and Gerald Goring had not yet returned. He wrote every other day, telling Madoline all he had been doing; the picture-galleries and theatres he had visited, the clubs at which he had dined; yet in all these letters of his, affectionate as they were, there was a tone which sustained in Lina’s mind the idea that her lover was in some way troubled or worried. The few words which gave rise to this impression were slight enough; she hardly knew how or why the notion had entered her mind, but it was there, and remained there, and it increased her anxiety for his return to an almost painful degree. While she was expecting him daily and hourly, a much longer letter arrived, which on the first reading almost broke her heart: ‘MY DEAR ONE,—I write in tremendous excitement and flurry of mind to tell you something which I fear may displease you; yet at the very beginning I will disarm your wrath by saying that if you put a veto upon this intention of mine it shall be instantly abandoned. Subject to this, dear love, I am going, in hot haste, to Canada. Don’t be startled, Lina. It is no more nowadays than going to Scotland. Men I know go across for the salmon-fishing every autumn, and are absent so short a time that their friends hardly miss them from the beaten tracks at home.