"Oh, no, no," almost possessively, she stretched forth a hand to detain him. "You have nothing to do but wait, and I shall run through this," touching the letter, "in a moment." Preston sat down beside her again and lighting a cigarette, smoked and looked out over the brilliant garden before him while she read. It was evident, Alice discovered this before she had finished the first page, that Isabel Hewston was actuated by no deeper motive than pure, erratic impulse when she placed that special stamp upon the letter. At least so Alice and Preston probably would have agreed and Isabel reluctantly would have admitted it. But the Fates who sit in the background and transmit wireless messages to mortals would have smiled inscrutably and shaken their heads. If Isabel hadn't stuck that stamp on for no reason whatever, and if the page hadn't sought Alice through the breeze-caressed, rose-scented garden and given her the missive at the exact moment he did--but, as Eugene Gresham would say, "What's the use? Why conjecture?" What really occurred was this: "Dearest Alice," wrote Mrs. Hewston, "how I envy you in that southern paradise while here the weather merely changes from sleet and snow to rain and then back again." There was a page or two of this and of Willoughby's various ailments and symptoms, and then a long and glowing account of her visit to Perdita Hepworth, and a great deal of minute, enthusiastic description of the gowns that Dita was designing for her. This Alice read with interest, but greater interest still did she bestow upon the statement that there appeared to be a coldness between Wallace Martin and Maud Carmine, owing, it was said, to the fact that she had ruthlessly criticized his last play, and prophesied accurately its speedy failure. "It does seem too bad, dear," Isabel wrote next, "that you, away off in California, should have to come in for your share of the gossip which seems so sadly rife this season." Here Alice clutched the pages and, bending over, bestowed upon them an almost breathless attention. What could Isabel mean? "It is perfectly stupid, of course," the letter ran, "and I would not think of mentioning it to you except that we have always been frank about such things, and, anyway, you ought to know. There is a rumor about that you went to California hoping to catch Cresswell's heart in the rebound. People now believe that he and Perdita have definitely separated and that you knew this, and, as some one put it to me, so vulgarly too, dear, camped down on his trail. They say now that the incident of the actress was merely to make things easier for Perdita in gaining her freedom, but that soon after that is granted her, Willoughby says that, as those coarse men express it, you will lead Cress to the altar."