'So you are "Heriot's choice," are you, Polly?' he said, taking her hand kindly, and looking at the happy, blushing face. 'Are you glad, Richard?' she whispered, shyly. 'I can hardly tell,' he returned, with a curiously perplexed expression. 'I believe overwhelming surprise was my first sensation on hearing the wonderful intelligence. I gave such an exclamation that Roy turned quite pale, and thought something had happened at home, and then he got in a temper, and carried off the letter to read by himself; he would have it I was chaffing him.' Polly pouted half-seriously. 'You are not a bit nice to me, Richard, or Roy either. Why has he never written to me himself? He must have got my two letters.' 'You forget; I have never seen anything of him for the last six weeks. Fancy my finding him off on the tramp when I returned that night, prosecuting one of his art pilgrimages, as he calls them, to some shrine of beauty or other. He had not even the grace to apologise for his base desertion till a week afterwards. However, Frognal without Rex was not to be borne; so I started off to Cornwall in search of our reading party, and then got inveigled by Oxenham, who carried me off to Ilfracombe.' 'It was very wrong of Rex to leave you; he is not generally so thoughtless,' returned Polly, who had been secretly chagrined by this neglect on the part of her old favourite. 'Is there no letter from Rex?' had been a daily question for weeks. 'Rex is a regular Bohemian since he took to wearing a moustache and a velvet coat. All the Hampstead young ladies are breaking their hearts over him. He looks so handsome and picturesque; if he would only cut his hair shorter, and open his sleepy eyes, I should admire him myself.' Polly sighed. 'I wish he would come home, dear old fellow. I long to see him; but I am dreadfully angry with him, all the same; he ought to have written to Dr. Heriot, if not to me. It is disrespectful--unkind--not like Rex at all.' And Polly's bright eyes swam with tears of genuine resentment. 'I shall tell Roy how you take his unkindness to heart.' She shook her head. 'It is very ungrateful of him, to say the least of it. You have spoiled him, Polly.' 'No,' she returned, very gravely. 'Rex is too good to be spoiled: he must have some reason for his silence. If he had told me he was going to be married--to--to any of those young ladies you mention, I would have gone to London to see his wife. I know,' she continued, softly, 'Rex was fonder of me than he was of Olive and Chriss. I was just like a favourite sister, and I always felt as though he were my own--own brother. Why there is nothing that I would not do for Rex.' 'Dear Polly, we all know that; you have been the truest little sister to him, and to us all.' 'Yes, and then for him to treat me like this--to be silent six whole weeks. Perhaps he did not like Aunt Milly writing. Perhaps he thought I ought to have written to him myself; and I have since--two long letters.'