At last, however, as there is no delay but must come to an end one time or another, he found himself at last in his room, in his smoking-coat and slippers, divested of his stiff collar--at his ease, the windows open upon the quiet of the Temple Gardens, a little fresh air breathing in. He had taken all this trouble to secure ease for himself, to put off a little the reading of the letter. Now the moment had come when it would be absurd to delay any longer. It was so natural to see her familiar handwriting--not a lady’s hand, angular and pointed, like her mother’s, but the handwriting of her generation, which looks as if it were full of character, until one perceives that it _is_ the writing of the generation, and all the girls and boys write much the same. He took time for this reflection still as he tore open the envelope. There were two sheets very well filled, and written in at the corners, so that no available spot was lost. “My dear old John,” were the first words he saw. He put down the letter and thought over the address. Well, she had always called him so. He was old John when he was fourteen, to little Elinor. They had always known each other like that--like brother and sister. But not particularly like brother and sister--like cousins twice removed, which is a more interesting tie in some particulars. And now for the letter. “MY DEAR OLD JOHN: I want to tell you myself of a great thing that has happened to me--the very greatest thing that could happen in one’s life. Oh, John, dear old John, I feel as if I had nobody else I could open my heart to; for mamma--well, mamma is mamma, a dear mother and a good one; but you know she has her own ways of thinking----” He put down the letter again with a rueful little laugh. “And have not I my own ways of thinking, too?” he said to himself. “Jack dear,” continued the letter, “you must give me your sympathy, all your sympathy. You never were in love, I suppose (oh, what an odious way that is of putting it! but it spares one’s feelings a little, for even in writing it is too tremendous a thing to say quite gravely and seriously, as one feels it). Dear John, I know you never were in love, or you would have told me; but still----” “Oh,” he said to himself, with the merest suspicion of a little quiver in his lip, which might, of course, have been a laugh, but, on the other hand, might have been something else, “I never was--or I would have told her--That’s the way she looks at it.” Then he took up the letter again.