Dick sat silent for several moments, the colour coming and going in her cheeks; she was a very chivalrous little girl, and her whole heart had gone out in unreasoning admiration to Patricia, when first she saw her; her beauty, her brilliancy, her sparkling vivacity making an absolute captive of the maiden, who, as she looked at her, felt all her own shortcomings rise up and confront her in formidable array. She had heard the story of Philip's and Patricia's engagement, and its unhappy termination, and she had secretly admired him, in her own mind, for a long time, and had felt Patricia's reception of him as a personal injury, which she longed to put right by a few judicious words. She felt sure they would be judicious because they would be honest. Now if he would only name Patricia, only ask some question, no matter how trivial, that she might introduce this one absorbing subject. But Mr. Tremain, with that perverted obstinacy so often displayed, which consists in saying the wrong thing at the right moment, when he did speak, propounded a question so diametrically opposite to Dick Darling's thoughts that that young lady was actually taken aback, and stared at him blankly for a full second without answering. And yet Philip had only inquired if Miss Dick could say why Mdlle. Lamien had not appeared that evening? It was a simple enough question, but Miss Darling seemed incapable of replying to it, so he spoke again. "My dear Miss Dick, what have I said? You look as though you had either not heard, or not understood me. Pray let me repeat myself. Can you tell me why Mdlle. Lamien has absented herself all this evening?" Miss Darling by this time had come back from her vain imaginings, and answered him readily enough. "Oh, I beg your pardon; I guess I must have been 'in Japan' when you first spoke. Why hasn't Mdlle. Lamien come down this evening? For a very simple reason: she has gone away." "Gone away!" echoed Philip. "But I saw her late this afternoon in the corridor." He did not add, and _heard_ her; since, if Esther Newbold spoke truly, it was she who had startled him by her sad, monotonous song, and her voice that had an echo of Patty's in its notes. "Oh, no doubt," replied Miss Darling, "she only went away while we were at dinner; I heard the wheels of the dog-cart just as we had eaten our way up to the _suprême de volaille_." "Is she to be gone long?" asked Philip, conscious and yet astonished at the feeling of loss this news created in him. "I really don't know," replied Dick, looking a little surprised. "She left this note for me," taking out the pink envelope from its hiding-place and showing it to him. He bent forward eagerly to scan it as it lay on her outstretched palm, the superscription hidden, the reverse side lying uppermost. On this he saw impressed a tiny coronet and a twisted cypher, "_A. de L._"