"Poor little girl," Rupert murmured, "if this is genuine, I am sorry for C.M. She is the only one of the lot who writes like a lady, and the only one who does not suggest a meeting, or actually appoint a meeting place. Those are points in her favour. But, had I ever any intention of marrying, I should not make my matrimonial arrangements through the medium of a newspaper!" Each writer of the letters which had so disturbed Mernside at breakfast time, received a few hours later a short note, and the wording of all the notes was identical. "DEAR MADAM,-- "I regret that both you and I should have been the victims of a hoax. The advertisement in the _Sunday Recorder_ was inserted without my knowledge or consent. Regretting any annoyance this may cause you. "Yours faithfully, R.M." But when, having laboured through the mass of "Rosalies," "Violets," "Lilians," and "Hildas," he finally reached the little note signed "C.M.," Mernside paused. "I--don't think I can let this little girl know she has been the victim of a hoax," he mused, a pitiful tenderness creeping about his heart as he thought of the girl who was without work or home; "the others are fairly tough-skinned, I am ready to swear. This one"--he looked again at the round, characteristic handwriting, the simple phrases--"this one--did not make up her mind to write such a letter, excepting under stress of circumstances, I am sure of that. This one--is different. And if that incorrigible young ass, Jack Layton, hadn't started on a yachting cruise last week, I--should jolly well like to give him a thrashing." Feeling the need, as he himself expressed it, of a balloon full of fresh air after his distasteful occupation of the morning, Rupert went out at about eleven o'clock, taking with him the pile of letters he had to post. "Can't leave them for Courtfield's inquisitive eyes," he muttered. "Good chap as he is, Courtfield would think I had gone raving mad, if he saw all these things addressed to Christian names and initials. I'll get rid of the horrors, and then see if Margaret can take the taste of them away from me." The letters posted, he made his way briskly along Piccadilly, and across the Park, to a quiet road in Bayswater, where he stopped before a small detached house, standing a little back from the pavement, in its own garden. His ring at the bell brought to the door a middle-aged servant, whose plain but kindly face expanded into a smile when she saw him. He was evidently a frequent and welcome visitor, for to his cheery "Well, Elizabeth, how are things this morning?" she answered with another smile--