It took him a minute and a half to get into the morning-room and read these fateful lines:— “Mon ami,—[“Enchanting phrase! I can hear her say it.”] I have but this moment received your letter, which seems to have been delayed. [“Ah! this perfume! this perfume!”] I say nothing here of the happiness which its contents have given me. Come at once. “Jessica Pendleton. “Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over.” A rosy tide wandered to the roots of Mr. Dedham’s ashen locks, and he made a wild uncertain dab at his upper lip. Again there was no sound in the morning-room of the St. Christopher Club but the furious dashing of pens, the rending of parchment paper, the sudden scraping of a nervous foot. A tall broad-shouldered young man, with much repose of face and manner, entered the office from the avenue, glanced at the pigeon-holes above the clerk’s desk, then sauntered deliberately into the morning-room and looked out of the window. A slight rigidity of the nostrils alone betokened the impatience within, and his uneasy thoughts ran somewhat as follows:— “What a fool I have been! After all my experience with women to make such an ass of myself over the veriest coquette that ever breathed; but her preference for me last winter was so pointed—oh, damnation!” He stood gnawing his underlip at the lumbering ’bus, but turned suddenly as a man approached from behind and presented several letters on a tray. The first and only one he opened ran thus:— “Mon ami!—I have but this moment received your letter, which seems to have been delayed. I say nothing here of the happiness which its contents have given me. Come at once. “Jessica Pendleton. “Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over.” Severance folded the note, his face paling a little. “Well, well, she is true after all. What a brute I was to misjudge her!” He strolled back to the office. “I will go home and write to her, and to-morrow I shall see her! Great Heaven! Were six months ever so long before?” As he turned from the coat-room Boswell entered the office by the opposite door. “The fellow looks as gay as a lark,” he thought. “He hasn’t looked like that for six months. I believe I’ll make it up with him—particularly as I’ve come out ahead!” “Give me that package,” demanded Boswell dreamily of the clerk. Then he caught sight of Severance. “Why, Jack, old fellow!” he cried, “how are you? Haven’t seen you looking so well for an age. Don’t go out. It’s too hot.” “Oh, hang it! I’ve got to. I’m off for Newport to-morrow. It’s so infernally dull in town.” “Going to Newport to-morrow! So am I. My aunt is quite ill and has sent for me. I’m her heir, you know.” “No? Didn’t know you had an aunt. I congratulate you. Hope she’ll go off, I’m sure.”