For the first time in all the long, hard trial of their protracted engagement, she broke down and cried bitterly. He took her in his arms and soothed her. He told her he knew all about it, and that she was going to be entirely well; that he asked only that she would not worry, but would trust to him that she would come safely and happily out of all this trouble and mystery. She yielded to his persuasions, and, indeed, it was evident that she had hardly strength to resist him even had she not believed. She rested quietly on his shoulder and let him drift into a description of the route he had laid out, and in her interest she seemed to forget her trouble. Before he left, she asked him what she could tell the dressmaker, who would suspect if she was given no reason for being called upon to make a new waist. He took the injured garment, went to the writing-table, and splashed ink on the cut portions. "You showed it to me," he said gayly, "and I was so incredibly clumsy as to spill ink on it. Men are so stupid." She laughed, and he went away feeling that he could gladly have throttled Jenny, could he but succeed in getting her in some other body than that belonging to his betrothed. If he was irritated by this experience, however, he had one to meet later which tried him still more. Abby, on letting him into the house on Tuesday, once more led him mysteriously into the reception-room. "Miss Alice's been writing to herself, sir." She held toward him a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to Alice. He took it half mechanically, and as he wondered how he was to circumvent this new trick of the maliciously ingenious Jenny, he noted that the handwriting was strangely different from Alice's usual style. "Did she give you this to post?" he asked. "It was with the other letters, and I noticed it and did n't mail it." "I'll take it," he said. "You did perfectly right." He wondered whether the prescience of Jenny would enable her to discover that he had destroyed her note to Alice; then he smiled to realize how he was coming to think of her as almost a supernatural demon, and reflected that nothing could be easier than for her to leave a paper where Alice must find it. A couple of days later he found his thought verified when Alice said to him:-- "George, who is Jenny?" As she spoke, she put into his hand an unsigned note which said only, "George loves Jenny." The instant which was necessarily taken for its examination gave him a chance to steady himself. "You wrote it yourself," he said quietly. "Don't you recognize your paper and your writing? It's a little strange, but sleep-writing always is." "Then I am a somnambulist!" she exclaimed, with flushing cheek. "There is nothing dreadful in that," he replied. "You have promised to trust me about your health. I know all about it, and if you write yourself forty notes, you are not to bother." She sighed, and then bravely smiled.