There were several other people at dinner. It fell to Asquith to take down a certain Miss Pye, a tall young lady with a long thin nose, simply dressed in white, with much exposure of bust. This _décolleté_ costume was a thing Robert found it impossible to get used to; he felt that if he went on dining with ladies for another five-and-twenty years there would still arise in him the same sensation of amazement as often as he turned to speak and had his eyes regaled with a vision of the female form divine, with its most significant developments insisted upon. Singular questions of social economy invariably suggested themselves. How far was this fashion a consequence of severe competition in the marriage market? He always found it a little difficult to look his fair neighbour in the face, and, when he at length did so, experienced surprise at her placid equanimity. Miss Pye’s equanimity it would have taken much to disturb. As in duty bound, Robert made his endeavour to interest her in various kinds of conversation. The affirmative and negative particles alone replied to him. She ate with steady application; she smiled feebly when he attempted a very evident joke; she appeared to have no concern in any of the things about which men and women use or abuse the gift of speech. Yet he succeeded at last. “Did you ever read a book called------?” he asked, naming the novel of Marryat’s which had absorbed him through the afternoon. “I should think so!” exclaimed Miss Pye, her eyes gleaming with appreciation. “Isn’t it awfully jolly? And----” She proceeded to name half a dozen other works by the same refined and penetrating author. “That’s the kind of book I like,” she said. “I believe I ought to have been a boy by rights. My brothers have all Marryat, and Mayne Reid, and Cooper; and I know them all by heart. ‘Valentine Vox,’ too; do you know that? Oh, you just get it, as soon as you can. And ‘Tom Burke of Ours’; that’s Lever. And ‘Handy Andy.’ You _haven’t_ read ‘Handy Andy’? But what a great deal you have to read yet.” Robert admitted that such was the case. Miss Pye had got upon her subject, and Asquith drew her out. She was something of a new female type to him; but only so because he had long been unused to the society of English girls. Had he mentioned a book by George Eliot she would have told him that her mother didn’t approve of that writer, who was an atheist and immoral. Later he found himself by Isabel. Her proximity was pleasant to him. He would have preferred just now to sit by her in silence, an glance at her face occasionally, but that was scarcely possible. “You will let me hear from you when that business is over?” he said. “I will. Remember it is not my function to send invitations for the wedding.” “I suppose not.” Somebody else drew near. As they passed from the dining-room after breakfast next morning, Isabel said to Mrs. Stratton: “Come to the boudoir; I have a letter I want to show you.” The letter was this: