'I can't,' said Mark, more uncomfortably still. 'I have some--some business which I must see to alone.' 'Odd sort of place this for business! No, no, Master Mark, it won't do; I've got you, and I mean to stick to you; you know what a tactless beggar I can be when I like. Seriously, do you think I can't see there's something wrong? I'm hanged if I think it's safe to let you go about alone while you're looking like this; it isn't any--any hitch at Kensington Park Gardens, is it?' and there was a real anxiety in his tone as he asked this. 'No,' said Mark shortly, 'it's not that.' 'Have you got into any trouble, then, any scrape you don't see your way out of? You might do worse than tell me all about it.' 'There's nothing to tell,' said Mark, goaded past prudence by this persistence; 'it's only a letter, a rather important letter, which I brought out here to read quietly.' 'Why the deuce couldn't you say so before?' cried Caffyn. '_I_ won't interrupt you; read your letter by all means, and I'll walk up and down here till you're ready for me--only don't make me think _you_ want to cut me; you might wait till you're married for that, and you ought to know very well (if you don't) why I've been obliged, as it is, to decline the invitation to the marriage feast.' Mark saw that for some reason Caffyn did not mean to be shaken off just then, and, as he could bear the suspense no longer, and knew that to walk about with Caffyn and talk indifferently of his coming happiness with that letter unread in his pocket would drive him mad, he had no choice but to accept the compromise. So he went to the bench and began to open the letter with trembling hands, while Caffyn paced up and down at a discreet distance. 'I see what it is now,' he thought, as he noticed the foreign envelope, 'I'm uncommonly glad I came up just then. Will he go through with it after this? Will he tell me anything, I wonder? Very little, I fancy, of what I know already. We shall see.' This was the letter which Mark read, while the northeast wind roared through the boughs overhead, driving the gritty shell-dust in his face, and making the thin paper in his fingers flap with its vicious jerks:-- 'Talipot Bungalow, Newera Ellia, Ceylon.