"Silly!" cried her father. "Creep-Mouse didn't jump off till after midnight! This is for you!" [91] "For--me?" questioned Daphne. With incredulous fingers she took the yellow envelope and slit it end from end. "Why, it's from John," she whispered. "John Burnarde--Mr. John Burnarde." Swaying a little where she stood she bent her bright head to the message. Then white once more to the lips she handed the page to her father. "Read it to me yourself," said her father. "You know the man's accents and emphases better than I do and it won't make any sense to me unless I can hear the man's voice in it." Once again the bright head bent to the page. "To Miss Daphne Bretton," began the young voice as one quotes some precious-memoried phrase. "While your blessed letter completely relieves mind it cannot unfortunately relieve certain distressing complications of----" As though breaking its way through lips turned suddenly to ice the sweet enunciation began quite palpably to crisp around the edges of its words. "Certain distressing complications of this most unhappy situation. Forwarding to you all love and confidence am yet tied hand and foot against immediate action. Letter follows. "T. D." [92] "Which being interpreted?" questioned her father. "Which being interpreted," rallied Daphne, "is academic for nothing doing.----" "U--m--m," mused her father, "and what does 'T. D.' stand for?" "'Teacher-Dear,'" flushed Daphne. "It was just a sort of a joke between us. I never somehow quite got round to calling him 'John.'" As though lost in the most abstract reflection Jaffrey Bretton cocked his head on one side. "It's a good telegram," he said. "Oh, a perfectly good telegram," acquiesced Daphne. With a curiously old gesture of finality she turned aside. "So in this fashion ends passion," she murmured. "What do you know about passion?" quizzed her father. "It rhymes with 'fashion,'" said Daphne. For an instant only from blue eyes to black eyes and black eyes to blue again the baffling, sphynxlike mystery of youth defied the baffling, sphynxlike mystery of experience. [93] Then quite abruptly her father reached out and cupped the little white quivering chin in the hollow of his hand. "What did you _think_ your lover would do, Daphne?" he smiled. "Tear down the college chapel? Set fire to the gymnasium? Cast all the faculty into dungeons--and come riding forth to claim you on a coal black charger decked with crimson trappings?" "No, of course not," said Daphne. "Only----"