The next day he heard from Mrs. Kerr. An examination of the post-marks told him that it had been intended he should hear at the same time as the Admiral. 'My dearest Tony,' she wrote, 'I have bad news for you, and I wish with all my heart I had never undertaken Cynthia. I knew she would be attractive, but I didn't think it would be to any purpose on her own score. I had a preconceived idea that our trip would prove to her there was no one like you in the world. And now, my dear old fellow, she has electrified us by announcing her engagement to a man whom we had not recognised as a suitor. We met him first at Ajaccio, then he turned up in Zante, and finally we found him at St. Helier's. Still I suspected nothing. St. John, who was with her when he ran up against them here, did. You know how the colour flies, positively _flies_ into her cheeks; well, that's how it did, St. John says, when she saw him. He told me, but I pooh-poohed it. She's been so long proof, and there was you. However, everything and everybody but Mr. Danby are forgotten now; St. John says it's a downright case of evangelisation--all her idols are cast to the moles and bats. He teases her dreadfully; she's been wearing her hair with fillets and he says he knows now why, because Mr. Danby was so fond of fillets of kid at Ajaccio. This of course is all nonsense. But what will the Admiral say? I have expostulated with her; I told her she never ought to have been engaged here but have let him come to Lafer. You know what a laugh she has when she's happy; well, she just laughed--"Theo," she said, "your worldly wisdom guards the gardens of the Hesperides." "Gardens of the fiddle-sticks!" said I. But all is useless. She is packing now, and will be home almost before you get this. St. John says I ought to write to Mrs. Marlowe, but that means the Admiral, and I don't know what I can say, except that it really is no more my fault than that I asked her to come with us. Oh, Tony, my dearest boy, I wish I could see you! But don't make a trouble of it, and do let me know what you think of Mr. Danby.--Yours ever, Theodosia Kerr.' Tremenheere sat for a long time with this before him. He knew Theo's style of writing, but had excused her when there really was nothing to say--he had not expected the letters of a Disraeli except for egotism. But when there was something to say he had expected she would be able to say it. And here was tragedy made into comedy, a drama slurred out of all proportion. He had wanted to know what she thought of Danby, what Kerr thought of him. And here was judgment thrown on to his shoulders. 'Good God!' he thought, 'how am I to get to know him? That is just what I cannot do until she has married him.'