"MY DEAR BEENHAM:--I am delighted that your whereabouts has been discovered. All search for you has been unavailing--one would not have thought it so easy for a man to disappear--and I had begun to be afraid that you had gone abroad. As I say, I am delighted, and I trust you are having a pleasant vacation. I owe you, I am afraid, a profound apology. If there be any excuse, it must be put down to the heat and the strain of the end of the scholastic year. I was thinking, I protest, only of the ancient foundation which you and I have for so long served. The Chairman of the Governors, always, as you know, your friend, has denounced what he is pleased to call my Puritanical cowardice. The Police have made inquiries about the young woman and state that she is a domestic servant who left her situation in distressing circumstances without her box and without a character. I do apologize most humbly, my dear Beenham, and I look to see you in your place at the commencement of the approaching term." Old Mole read this letter three times, and the description of his wife stabbed him on each perusal more deeply to the heart. He tore the sheet across and across and burned the pieces on the hearth. Matilda came in and found him at it: and when she spoke to him he gave no answer, but remained kneeling by the fender, turning the poker from one hand to the other. "Are you cross with me?" she said. "No. Not with you. Not with you. Not with you." "You don't often say things three times." She came and laid her hands on his shoulders, and he took them and kissed them, for now he adored her. In the evening came a knock at the front door. Mr. Mole was at the theater arranging for a new play with which to reopen when the boxing season, which had been extended, was over. The slut of a landlady took no notice, and the knock was repeated thrice. Matilda went down and opened the door and found on the step a short, plump, rotund, elegant little man with spectacles and a huge mustache. He asked for Mr. Beenham, and she said she was Mrs. Beenham. He drew himself up and was very stiff and said at the back of his throat: "I am your husband's brother."