A note which meant all or nothing according to the wishes of the reader. In this case it meant all, for Jack, returning to his rooms after a disastrous attempt to begin his future rôle in life by playing whist with the old fogies at his club, was feeling that life, even as a misogynist, was unendurable, when the sight of his aunt's handwriting made his heart beat. The note was not in the least what he had expected to receive, and made him somehow feel as if he had grossly exaggerated the necessity for grief. "Aunt Soph is on my side, anyhow," said the young man, with a certain elation, "and I was a brute, I'm afraid." The result being, that before Alice, who had been spending the afternoon with Paul Macleod's sister, Lady George Temple, had returned from her drive, Jack, with a big gardenia in his coat, was ushered into the drawing-room, where his aunt, in satin and diamonds, was skimming through the last few pages of another novel which had to be returned to the library that evening. "Good boy!" she said, smiling. "Now, I hope you won't spoil Alice's pleasure to-night by even alluding to your rudeness." Jack looked a little aghast. "But, Aunt Sophia, I must beg her pardon." "Then you had better do it at once," replied Mrs. Woodward, "and get it over. For there she is at the door. You can run downstairs and meet her, for she will have to go up to dress at once. She is late as it is." Begging your mistress's pardon on the way upstairs, before the eyes of a butler and a footman, was not quite what Jack had pictured to himself; but it was better than nothing, and Alice's unfeigned look of relief at seeing him could not be mistaken. Mrs. Woodward slept soundly that night, feeling that she had done a good day's work, and steered the bark of her daughter's happiness out of a great danger. And happiness to her philosophy meant much, since virtue was so very much easier of attainment when life went smoothly. This was partly the reason why she did not detail the past danger to her husband after the manner of some wives, who love to chase sleep from their good man's eyes by breaking in upon the delicious drowsiness of the first ten minutes in bed by perfectly needless revelations of past woe.