“You do?” responded Gilead, with an air of delighted relief. “Then, Madam, a fat man doats on you, and nothing remains to me but to congratulate you both on this most happy termination to a misunderstanding.” He bowed, as if he felt his mission accomplished. “O, stay, sir!” cried Miss Cox. She took a quick step forward; she pressed her handkerchief to her bosom. “My Bundy!” she murmured--“My own Bundy! And was it apprehension over his little roguish deceit that moved him to this step? But I fear, I shudder over my own. Will he forgive it? Will he credit that the waste, the decline--O, we starve on despond: hope is so filling! Tell him that his message has put new life into me; tell him that, repossessing him, I am already twice the woman I was. To meet him half-way, I will absorb the sustenance naturally repugnant to me--gross meats and aliments, in place of the fruits and spring water most sufficing to my needs. Tell him that, given a little time--” She paused, breathless. “It is what he himself most craves,” said Gilead. A certain perplexity overcame him. “I confess, Madam,” he said, “that what puzzles me is the sudden inevitability of this meeting so long delayed.” “It was due to myself,” answered the lady; and, panting, continued, with an hysterical incoherence: “A recent snap-shot--horrible, libellous, revolting--appeared in a weekly paper--I feared he would see it--urged by desperation--a travesty of the truth--reality less disenchanting--recoil from worst to something comparatively reassuring--resolved in despair to risk all--force conclusions for bliss or damnation--insisted on meeting, and having written would have withdrawn, but too late. And now--” she broke off with a gasp, and then continued: “O, sir! your appearance--the letter--I believed that he had seen, and that you--his agent--the messenger of my doom--!” She stopped, gazing at her hearer in liquid emotion. “You wrong me,” said Gilead gravely, “in deeming me capable of so unchivalrous a deed. No, Madam; my mission--it is unnecessary and would be unadvisable to explain how and where undertaken--was one of appeal on behalf of Mr Bundy’s conscious disabilities. That mission being now accomplished, I trust to the satisfaction of all parties, I shall beg permission to take my leave, only first charging myself with such answer as you shall deem it expedient to return to your richly endowed suitor.” THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (_concluded_) Gilead walked back to the Agency with a firm step, and that steadfast purpose of loyalty burning unquenched in his heart. On the way he stopped at a famous jeweller’s in Bond Street to make a purchase, having accomplished which he continued his journey to the office.