P.S. Please recollect that I am only handsome according to the good old proverb, and do not mistake me for an enterprising hackman. Mrs. Rosscott clapped her hands with delight when she finished the letter. She was overjoyed at the success of her “opening play,” and she wrote her new correspondent two lines accepting his invitation, and went down on the appointed train on the appointed day. He met her at the depot and they divined one another at the first glance. It was impossible not to know so pretty a woman—or so homely a man. For the ancestors of Mitchell had worn kilts and red hair in centuries gone by, and although he proved the truth of the red-hair proposition, no one would ever believe that anything of his build could ever have been induced to have put itself into kilts—knowingly. Furthermore, his voice had a crick in it, and went by jerks, and his eyebrows sympathized with his voice, and the eyes below them were little and gray and twinkling, and altogether he was the sort of man who is termed—according to a certain style of phrasing—“above suspicion.” But she liked him, oh! immensely, and he liked her. And when they were riding up in the carriage together she felt how thoroughly trustworthy his gray eyes and good smile declared him to be, and had no hesitation in telling him what she wanted to do, and in asking him what she wanted to know. Mitchell certainly had a talent for plotting, for when they reached the house where the culprits were temporarily domiciled, Burnett had gone out to give his mended ribs some exercise, and Jack was reading alone in the room where they shared one another’s liniments with friendly generosity. The arch-conspirator went upstairs, came down, and then, seeking the lady whom he had left in the parlor, said to her: “Denham’s up there and you can go up and say whatever you have to say. You know ‘In union there is strength.’ Well you’ve got him alone now, and he’ll prove weakly as a consequence or I miss my guess.” Then he walked straight over by the window and picked up a magazine as if it was all settled, and she only hesitated for half a second before she turned and went upstairs. There was a door half open in the hall above, and she knew that that must be the door. She tapped at it lightly, and a man’s voice (a voice that she knew well), called out gruffly: “Come in!” She pushed the door open at that and entered, and saw Jack, and he saw her. He turned very pale at the sight, and then the color flooded his face, and he rose from his chair abruptly, and put his hand up to the strips that held the bandage on his head. “Burnett isn’t here,” he said quickly. “He went out just a few minutes ago.” His tone was hard, and yet at the same time it shook slightly. She approached him, holding out her hand. “I’m glad of that,” she said, “because it was to see you that I came.” To her great surprise something mutinous and scornful flashed in his eyes as he rolled a chair forward for her.