The Colonel opened round eyes of astonishment, but his mustache was still. He rang the bell and summoned the servants. Under severe cross-examination, Chaplin, the footman, gave evidence that three packing-cases had left Coton Manor for the station early in the morning before the bursting of the storm. Frida, too, had discerned the face of the sky, and--admirable strategist!--had secured her transports. The Colonel dismissed his witnesses, and appealed helplessly to Durant; indeed, the comprehension in the young man's face gave him an appearance of guilty complicity. "What does it mean, Durant? what does it mean?" Durant smiled, not without compassion. When a young woman arranges her accounts, and makes off with three packing-cases, containing her library and her mother's portrait, the meaning obviously is that she is not coming back again in a hurry. He suggested that perhaps Miss Tancred proposed to make a lengthier stay on the Continent than had been surmised. "The whole thing," said the Colonel, "is incomprehensible to me." For the rest of the evening he remained visibly subdued by the presence of the incomprehensible; after coffee he pulled himself together and prepared to face it. "There will be no whist this evening," he announced. "You will excuse me, Durant; I have an immensity of work on hand. Chaplin, put some whiskey and water in the study, and light the little lamp on my literary machine." Tuesday morning's post brought explanation. Two letters lay on the breakfast table, both from a fresh hotel, the _Hotel Metropole_, both addressed in Frida Tancred's handwriting, one to the Colonel and the other to Durant. Durant's ran thus: "DEAR MR. DURANT:--You will explain everything to my father, won't you? I have done my best, but he will never see it; it is the sort of thing he never could see--my reasons for going away and staying away. They are hard to understand, but, as far as I have made them out myself, it seems that I went away for his sake; but I believe, in fact I know, that I shall stay away for my own. You will understand it; we thrashed it all out that Saturday afternoon--you remember?--and you understood then. And so I trust you. "Always sincerely yours, "FRIDA TANCRED. "P.S.--Write and tell me how he takes it. I can see it--so clearly!--from his point of view. I hope he will not be unhappy. "P.P.S.--We sail to-morrow." He was still knitting his brows over the opening sentences when the Colonel flicked his own letter across the table. "Read this, Durant, and tell me what you think of it." Durant read: