The paper felt icy to touch. I pulled it out and read it to the end. Then I threw it in the fire. The sullen, charred sticks had not life enough to burn it. I lit a match and watched the bright flames curl up the chimney until all was destroyed. Then I fled. Here at least in the cottage I will never come again. The room is full of ghosts. On the whole, however, my visit did me good. I returned to Ledstone with a firm determination to be more like grandmamma. A telegram was awaiting me from Augustus, sent from his first stopping-place. He had caught the measles, it appeared. The measles! I thought only children got the measles. Poor Augustus! He would make a bad patient. I was truly sorry, and sent the most affectionate and sympathetic answer I could think of to meet him at St. Helena. I wrote to the war office, asking them please to send me any further news when they received it. But the measles! It almost made me laugh. II Next day Lady Tilchester wrote and asked me to go to Harley. She had heard I was alone, and would be so delighted to have me for a week, she said. I started two days afterwards. To see her would give me pleasure. "How very white and thin you are looking, dear!" she said, as we sat together in her sitting-room the first afternoon I arrived. "You are not the same person as the very young girl who danced at the Yeomanry ball in May. How old are you, Ambrosine?" "I was twenty in October." "Twenty years old! Only twenty years old, and with that sad face! Nothing in life ought to make one sad at twenty. You look like a piteous child. I could imagine Muriel, with a dead bird, or a set of kittens to be drowned, looking as pathetic as you do." "I know, I am ashamed of myself," I said, "Grandmamma would be so angry with me if she were here." "Well, now we are going to cheer you up. The Duke is coming on Saturday. He is not married yet, you see." "Oh, tell me how the affair went," I said, smiling. "It--it's--a month ago we were at Myrlton." "The silly girl preferred Luffy, but for the last weeks they both were hanging on. Miss Trumpet and her aunt were staying at Claridge's, and they tell me it was too ridiculous! Luffy lunched with them every day, and Berty dined in the evening." "You did not tell her about the Coronation, then?" "Yes, I _did_! But just for once in a way she had fallen in love--Luffy _is_ beautiful, you know!--and, my dear child, any girl or woman in love is the most unreasonable, absurd creature on the face of the earth." "Yes, I know. But the Americans don't get in love like other nations. She assured me they knew how to keep men in their places on the other side of the Atlantic." "But the 'place' of a man is doing exactly what the particular woman in the case wants him to do, don't forget that! And Miss Trumpet finally decided, last week, that she wanted him to be her husband." "Poor Duke!" I said. "Oh, I don't think Berty minds very much. Anyway, you will be able to console him."