So I went to Rufus Blight on the afternoon before I sailed, and I went not without misgivings as to the part that I was playing. Many times in the walk up the Avenue I turned back, doubting, and then I would repeat my old-time promise to Penelope and the Professor's injunction given to me that early morning as we stood together on the street. And so at last I found myself before the great house, and the grilled door closed behind me, leaving no retreat. Mr. Blight was in his "den," resting after his day's golf in a deep chair by an open window, and he rose from a litter of evening papers to greet me. "Well, David, we thought that you had forgotten us," he said. "Penelope remarked just this morning that it was high time you appeared to offer your congratulations." "I have been very busy," I returned. "To-morrow I start abroad for a year at least, and I came to say good-by and to tell you----" In my eagerness to have my story over I should have plunged right into it, but he interrupted me. "Abroad, eh? Well, we may see you after the wedding. We are all going over after the wedding." The calm way in which Mr. Blight spoke of the wedding chilled me. It was so absolutely settled that there was to be a wedding that in me there seemed to be embodied that mythical person who is commanded so sternly to speak or forever hold his peace. For a time I did hold my peace, but it was only because Rufus Blight evinced such a lively interest in my affairs that I had no opportunity to speak of those matters which touched him so intimately. "Well, we certainly shall hunt you up in London in September," he said. "We shall be over in September. The wedding is to be in July at Newport. We have taken a house there, or rather Mrs. Bannister has for us." He saw that I could not restrain a smile at the mention of Mrs. Bannister, and he laughed heartily. "I don't know how we should get along without Mrs. Bannister. You see, David, all I know anything about is the steel trade, and being out of that I have to have a general manager for this social business. She certainly does manage. Why, if it wasn't for her I doubt if we could arrange a wedding. Indeed, I sometimes even doubt if there would be an engagement." This same doubt had been tenaciously present in my own mind for some days, and much as I should have liked to express it with heat and to join to it my opinion of the masterful woman's manoeuvres, I simply laughed formally and said, "Indeed!"