“Sorry to trouble you again,” said the Governor as I presented myself before him once more. “I forgot, in the middle of all that other business”—this, I suppose, might have applied to either the dictating of his letters, or the choosing of his betrothal ring—“to tell you that I intend to let my mother know, to-night, about this engagement of ours.” “Oh, yes.” “You will probably hear from her to-morrow, inviting you to stay at our house—it’s near Sevenoaks. You had better send in your formal resignation to the office at once, and make your arrangements to come on for a fortnight’s visit or so, in a few days. Will that be convenient to you?” “Oh, perfectly,” I said obediently, hoping that I did not show any outward symptoms of that sick feeling of panic that possessed me. To stay at the Governor’s house? So soon? Horrors! With the Governor’s mother? What _will_ she be like? Exactly like him, probably, only far more forbidding; women can always be more alarming than even the most terrifying of men. An elderly feminine edition of Still Waters! Ye gods! And she will hate me, of course; look upon me as that designing minx of a typist who had “got round” her son in business-hours and prevented him from “doing well for himself” in some other direction. People with money always want their children to marry people with more! It will be Lady Vandeleur over again, only worse. How appalling! Perhaps she will make herself as disagreeable to me as possible, in the hope of inducing me to feel that I should never be able to stand such a mother-in-law, and that I should simply have to break it off!—which, under the circumstances, I’m powerless to do! “And—er—that will be all, this afternoon, thank you. You will hand your notes of my letters to Mr. Alexander. If you have arrangements to make, you can leave as early as you choose to-day.” “Thank you, Mr. Waters.” Feeling that I couldn’t have stood another minute of him and his “arrangements,” I walked quickly out of the room and down the passage. Round a corner, I heard the voice of our office mimic, who had slipped out on some pretext, in full flow of narrating to one of the telephone girls the amazing news that I know was being buzzed all over the Near Oriental offices. —“but, my dear, the little Trant gives out she’s madly in love with him! She says”—here a most successful imitation of my own voice—“‘Whatever else I may be doing, I am NOT marrying him for his money!’” “P’raps it’s for his kind heart and his charm of manner, I don’t think,” suggested the telephone girl. “Or his good looks, eh?”