Notwithstanding all the hopes and fears of the past few days, there was the reply, after all, and Mabel, after reading it through three times, concluded that "Mort" must be "splendid," and that this sort of sport was far ahead of anything she had yet attempted. It combined, so she argued, all the spice of a heavy flirtation with the advantage of a strict incognito, and, with judicious management, she thought that it might be carried on in perfect safety for some time to come. Mr. Moreley was worse than usual that evening; dinner, without the articles which Mabel should have brought from the village, was not a success, and such a catastrophe always aggravated his disease. Having learned who was to blame for it, it was many days before he could forgive or forget his daughter's inhuman treatment of her much-suffering papa, so that she was left even more than usual to her own devices, and spent a deal of her time either with novels or her writing-case in the romantic corners of the pine wood or on the rocks and along the beach by the sea. Dudley's letter had been answered one afternoon, when the late sun was throwing long shadows and touching the distant sails upon the ocean with a shade of delicate pink, when a gentle breeze was only rippling the surface of the water and the waves were only murmuring soft music upon the sand; and if but half of the tender emotion which these surroundings gave birth to were transferred to her paper, Dudley, if his heart were at all as he had represented it, must have found in her reply an ample reward for his strange constancy. Circumstances, at any rate, went to show that it had been very welcome and pleasing to its recipient, for it was scarcely three days later that a second missive for Miss Jane Jennings reached the Stillton office and was duly claimed by Mabel before any possible accident could throw it into other hands. She had perused it with marked pleasure; it had contained many fresh allusions to "childhood's happy hour," many additional and very original accounts of doings in their fancied youth, several frank compliments, and a reiterated and very urgent request for a photograph. She had allowed several days to pass in considering what notice to take of this somewhat impudent demand. At one time she almost concluded to let Mr. Dudley drop altogether. What right had he to call upon her for her likeness? At another she was quite as firmly resolved to send him one. The whispered vanity which told her that he would not be disappointed in it was not easily resisted. At last, however, a simple middle course--an easy way out of the difficulty--suggested itself, and, as it promised, too, to throw another puzzling veil of mystery over her identity, she seized it eagerly, and that very afternoon put it into execution. Seated on the rocks that overlooked the sea, gathering thoughts in long gazes toward the distant horizon, and allowing imagination to roam as freely as could