Before this the young ladies of the house had been regaling me with a good many facts, and perhaps a little unintentional fiction, concerning the Geelong branch of Mr. Deedes's colonial career. It was a record highly characteristic of the Deedes who had been so popular and so infamous at school. He had won every tournament at the tennis-courts; he danced better than any man in Geelong. He had proposed to a rich Melbourne widow twice his age; had broken many hearts, including that of the blue-eyed daughter of the bank; and been seen at one dance, "well, in a state which made it impossible for us to know him any more." I had gathered from Deedes that my friends were none of his; now I was in possession of the cause; but the item affecting the Miss I'Anson whose face I had just seen the day before, and yet remembered vividly, was the item that focused my interest. I asked what sort of a girl she was. The account I received was not a little critical, yet reasonably charitable save on the part of one young lady who said nothing at all. She it was also who had said least against Deedes himself; and of this one I thought when in my panic I had broken loose from the bevy and fled to the farthest and most obscure corner of the kitchen-garden. Was she also in love with the attractive scamp? Could that Miss I'Anson with the blue eyes be in the same helpless case? Deedes had hinted at the manager's well-grounded good-will towards himself. Could there be, not a secret but a private understanding between Deedes and the daughter? He had given me a letter and spoken of enclosures which I had undertaken to deliver. Did one of them contain words of love for the sad eyes I could not forget? And if so, was I bound to keep my promise? The letter itself I had quite forgotten in the stress of a later anxiety now happily removed. But I opened and read it among the gooseberries and the cabbages; and was myself so revolted, alike by the purport and the tone of this communication, that I have no intention of reproducing it here. It had, however, the merit of brevity; and this was the point. He had been an idiot about girls all his life. There were two at least in Geelong of whom he wished, whatever happened to him, to take a tender leave. He had written two notes, but had left them undirected, because it was not fair that I should know the names. Would I put the three-cornered note on the ledge under the eaves, at the _back_ of the pavilion at the tennis-courts, and midway between the ladies' and the gentlemen's entrances? I should probably be going there that afternoon (as a matter of fact I was going), and it would take no trouble, but only a little care, to do this when nobody was near. But he would be immensely grateful to me; and still more so if I would slip the square note into the biggest book in a certain pew of the church nearest the Western Beach. He gave the number of the pew, and the exact bearings of the church, which was always open.