“Did you say--‘Dear Sir’?” she asked. “Certainly!” Peter Ruff answered. “And you really mean,” she continued, with obvious disapproval, “that I am to send this?” “I do not usually waste my time,” Peter Ruff reminded her, mildly, “by giving you down communications destined for the waste-paper basket.” She turned unwillingly to her machine. “Mr. Fitzgerald is very much better where he is,” she remarked. “That depends,” he answered. She adjusted a sheet of paper into her typewriter. “Who do you suppose ‘M’ is?” she asked. “With your assistance,” Peter Ruff remarked, a little sarcastically--“with your very kind assistance--I propose to find out!” Miss Brown sniffed, and banged at the keys of her typewriter. “That coal-dealer’s girl from Streatham!” she murmured to herself.... A few politely worded letters were exchanged. “M” declined to reveal her identity, but made an appointment to visit Mr. Ruff at his office. The morning she was expected, he wore an entirely new suit of clothes and was palpably nervous. Miss Brown, who had arrived a little late, sat with her back turned upon him, and ignored even his usual morning greeting. The atmosphere of the office was decidedly chilly! Fortunately, the expected visitor arrived early. Peter Ruff rose to receive his former sweetheart with an agitation perforce concealed, yet to him poignant indeed. For it was indeed Maud who entered the room and came towards him with carefully studied embarrassment and half doubtfully extended hand. He did not see the cheap millinery, the slightly more developed figure, the passing of that insipid prettiness which had once charmed him into the bloom of an over-early maturity. His eyes were blinded with that sort of masculine chivalry--the heritage only of fools and very clever men--which takes no note of such things. It was Miss Brown who, from her place in a corner of the room, ran over the cheap attractions of this unwelcome visitor with an expression of scornful wonder--who understood the tinsel of her jewellery, the cheap shoddiness of her ready-made gown; who appreciated, with merciless judgment, her mincing speech, her cheap, flirtatious method. Maud, with a diffidence not altogether assumed, had accepted the chair which Peter Ruff had placed for her, and sat fidgeting, for a moment, with the imitation gold purse which she was carrying. “I am sure, Mr. Ruff,” she said, looking demurely into her lap, “I ought not to have come here. I feel terribly guilty. It’s such an uncomfortable sort of position, too, isn’t it?” “I am sorry that you find it so,” Peter Ruff said. “If there is anything I can do--” “You are very kind,” she murmured, half raising her eyes to his and dropping them again, “but, you see, we are perfect strangers to one another. You don’t know me at all, do you? And I have only heard of you through the newspapers. You might think all sorts of things about my coming here to make enquiries about a gentleman.”