"To be sure, to be sure; of course I remember Mr. Wilton perfectly!" said the Rector, shaking hands with him again. "I can remember distinctly many of our little talks on archæology and so forth. Let me see, any relation to the great numismatist? Ah, now I know who you are quite well. There was an accident, or a calamity of some sort, if I recollect rightly. Kitty, my child, have you found my hat?" "Will you stay to lunch?" Katharine was asking him. "Of course he will stay to lunch," cried the Rector, without giving him time to reply. "I've picked up some fine specimens of old Sheffield plate that I should like to show you, Mr. Wilton. Stay to lunch? Why, of course. Dear me, I know I saw it somewhere-- Got to catch the two-thirty? Oh, that's all right; we'll drive you to the station after lunch. That child will like a chat with you, eh, Kitty? You used to be great friends, and she has something--no, no, I've looked there twice--something of interest to tell you, something of very great interest, eh, Kitty? A nice young fellow he is, too," continued the old man, stopping for a moment in his fruitless search. "By the way, you know him, don't you? It's young-- Ah, now I remember! I left it in the vestry; so stupid of me!" Paul stopped him as he was hurrying out of the room. "I must be off, thank you, sir. I am not going to catch the two-thirty at all. I think I will walk on somewhere and catch something else, if there happens to be anything. I am sure I wish Miss Katharine every happiness. Good-morning." He went out by the window as he had come, and they watched him as he walked across the lawn, the neat figure crowned by the conventional felt hat. He had not shaken hands with Katharine nor looked at her again. The Rector glanced after him and smoothed his hair thoughtfully. "Curious man that," he remarked with his simple smile. "He always looks to me as though there were a tragedy in his life." "Oh, I don't think so," said Katharine, coldly. "It is only his manner. He takes a joke tragically. Besides, he has never married unhappily, or anything like that." "That may be," said Cyril Austen, with one of his occasional flashes of intuition; "but it means a tragedy to some men if they haven't got married at all, and I fancy that's one of them. Ah, well, his father was one of our best--" Miss Esther's voice came shrilly down the passage, and the Rector hastened out of the room without finishing his sentence. "The annoyances of life," thought Katharine cynically, "are much more important than the tragedies." She picked up her letter once more and tore it open. Even then she did not read it at once, but looked out of the window first and beyond the garden, where a man's felt hat was moving irregularly along the top of the hedge. She made an impatient gesture and turned her back to the light, and unfolded Ted's letter at last. And this is what it contained:--