This letter was, (Wogan learned afterwards) the most laconic of them all, and it was the most momentous. It began, 'My own Strephon,' and then Strephon was crossed out and again written on the top, and it was signed 'Smilinda' in a doubtful hand; as though, at first, Brampton Bryan had recalled to her ladyship the beginning of their affections with so overpowering a compulsion that she must needs use the names which were associated with it, and then the dear woman's modesty timidly crossed them out, and in the end love got the upper hand and wrote them in again. At least that was a small portion of all the great meanings which Kelly read in the hesitation of her ladyship's address. Between the Strephon and the Smilinda there was but one line--'Come; there is a secret. I have great need of you.' But this had been quite enough to send Mr. Kelly spurring out into the November night with such speed that he came to Oxford the next day, where he found the snow lying very deep. The snow troubled him, no doubt, because it delayed him, but he took little account of the cold beyond a sharp pang or two lest Smilinda might have caught a chilblain. For himself--well, Smilinda had need of him--the great lady turned for help to the Irish outlaw. Wasn't it always so? Her Majesty throws her glove to the page, my lord the King Cophetua goes clean daft for a beggar wench, and the obliging Cupid builds a rickety bridge whereby the despairing lovers leap into each other's arms. Smilinda needed him! There was a tune ravished from Heaven! His whole frame moved to it as the waves to the direction of the moon. It sang in his blood, his heart beat to it, the hooves of his horse drummed it out on the road. Even the boughs of the trees whispered the words with a tender secrecy to the wind, much as the reeds whispered that other saying, ages ago, which the Queen in the fable had entrusted to them. And, 'faith, when you come to think of it, there was little difference in meaning between the two remarks. Smilinda needed Mr. Kelly! It was, after all, as much as to say 'Mr. Kelly has ass's ears.' He made such haste that on the evening of the second day after his departure from London he cantered up the drive of the Manor House. Lady Oxford met him in the hall, and Mr. Kelly's heart gave a great jump of pride when he saw her stately figure all softened to an attitude of expectation. 'I knew you would come,' she said; and, as Mr. Kelly bent over her hand, she whispered, 'My Strephon,' for all the world as if her emotion choked her. Then she raised her voice for the servants to hear: 'My lord is from home, Mr. Johnson, but he has commissioned me at once to pay you his regrets and to act as his deputy in your business.'