"No, I cannot," said the novelist, defiantly. "Have you quite forgotten Saltburn-by-the-Sea?" "I am certainly doing my best to forget it, my dear; a deadlier fortnight I never spent in my life. Not a decent library in the place, nor a man in the hotel who knew more than the mere alphabet of whist! Why remind me of it, my love?" "Because that's what ails Ida. She is suffering from the effects of Saltburn-by-the-Sea." "My dear Margaret, I simply don't believe it!" "But I know it, Wolff. Do listen to reason. Dear Ida has told me everything, and I am sorry to say she is very sadly in love." "In love with whom?" cried the novelist, who had been pacing up and down the room, after the manner of his kind, but who stopped now at the foot of the bed, to spread his hands out eloquently. "With that young Overton?" "With that young Over_man_. You were so short and sharp with him, you see, that you never even mastered his name." "I was naturally short and sharp with a young fellow whom she had only seen two or three times in her life--once on the pier, once in the gardens, once or twice about the hotel. It was a piece of confounded presumption! We didn't even know who or what the fellow was!" "He put you in the way of finding out, and you said you didn't want to know." "No more I did," said Wolff Mason. "You liked him well enough before he proposed to Ida." "That may be. He had more idea of whist than any of the others, which is saying precious little. But his proposal was a piece of infernal impertinence, and I told him so." "I am sorry you told him so, Wolff," said Mrs. Mason softly. "However, the affair is quite a thing of the past. You put a stop to it pretty effectually, and I daresay it was for the best. Only it is right you should know that young Overman and Ida met in Oxford Street yesterday, and that she has not slept all night for thinking about him." "The villain!" cried Wolff Mason, excitedly. "I suppose he asked her to run away with him?" "They did not speak. I was with Ida," said his wife. "It was the purest accident. Ida bowed--indeed, so did I--and he took off his hat, but no one stopped or spoke. Ida is troubled because he looked extremely wretched; even I can see his eyes now as they looked when we passed him. However, as I say, you put a stop to the matter, and they must both get over it as best they can. I have never blamed you, I think. It _was_ very premature, I grant you. My only feeling has been that, as a writer of romance all your days, you showed remarkably little sympathy with a pair of sufficiently romantic young lovers!" "My dear, I choose to keep romance in its proper place--between the covers of my books. I have more than enough of it there, I can assure you, if I could afford to consult my own taste."