"_I_ do!" said Fanny, with a decided nod of her head, the hair of which was by this time elaborately done up in curl-papers. Phoebe had also completed her preparations for bed. "And now, Phoebe, let us have a chat." She made this proposition with a feminine obliviousness of having spoken a single word since she had locked the bedroom door. "What about, Fanny?" "Open your mouth and shut your eyes, and see what God will send you," said Fanny. "Nonsense, Fanny." "Very well--nonsense. Then we won't have a chat. Only"--and Fanny pursed up her lips and shook her paper-covered little head wisely. "Only what?" "That you'll be sorry for it--that's all." "What a tease you are! There!" Phoebe opened her mouth and shut her eyes. "Don't move--don't stir!" cried Fanny, and she took from her dress an envelope, the edge of which she placed between Phoebe's teeth. "What is this?" "A piece of paper. I'd sooner have a chocolate cream." "You would, eh? Well, here's your chocolate cream--here's a packet of them--and if I don't tell him when he comes home, my name isn't Fanny Lethbridge." This remark caused Phoebe to open her eyes very quickly, and the colour on her face to come and go. Fanny's right hand was behind her back. "Tell whom, Fanny?" "'Tell whom, Fanny?'" mimicked Fanny. "Now _is_ there more than one Frederick Cornwall, Esq., in the world?" "There may be--in the London Directory." "But they don't all write letters from Switzerland to Camden Town, do they?" "Have you received another letter from Mr. Cornwall, Fanny?" "Yes, I have; and here it is. It came this morning." "And you kept it to yourself all this time!" "How could I show it to you before? You had hardly been in the house two minutes when papa came home with Mr. Kiss and Mr. Linton. Then there was Bob hanging about, and you know how he scowls when I speak lovingly of Fred--I beg his pardon, Mr. Frederick Cornwall. Then there was helping mother with the tea. Then there was the reading of the play. Then there were the songs. With all that excitement, the letter went clean out of my head--except that I thought you would like it all the better if we read it together quietly here, where nobody can disturb us." "You are a dear, good girl!" "Of course I am, and you're another." Whereupon the cousins, with their arms round each other's necks, fondly embraced. They were sitting now on the bed very cosily, side by side. "Phoebe, I have something very horrifying to tell you." "He hasn't met with an accident--he isn't ill?" exclaimed Phoebe, turning pale. "Not a bit of it. He is as well as five feet eleven, aged six-and-twenty, should be. No, it isn't that; but it is about him, though." "Tell me, Fanny."