"By Jove, I'm awfully sorry, but I've arranged to meet a man in New York on Wednesday. I simply had to do it. There was no way out of it." "Then you won't be here?" "I'll make a desperate effort to get back on the seven o'clock train from Washington. That will be in time?" "Yes, that will be in time. You are in New York and Washington two-thirds of the month now." "It's a beastly shame, too, but it won't last." With a smothered yawn, she rose from her chair, and went over to the canary cage, raising the silk cover, while she put her lips to the wires and piped softly. "Dicky is fast asleep," she remarked, turning away, "and you, Ben, are nodding. How dull the evenings are when one has nothing to do." The next day I went to New York, and leaving Washington on Thursday afternoon, I had expected to reach Richmond in time to appear at Sally's reception by nine o'clock that evening. But a wreck on the road caused the train to be held back for several hours, and it was already late when I jumped from the cab at my door, and hurried under the awning across the pavement. The sound of stringed instruments playing softly reached me as it had done so many years ago on the night when I first crossed the threshold; and a minute afterwards, when I went hastily up the staircase, in its covering of white, and its festoons of smilax, pretty girls made way for me, with laughing reprimands on their lips. Dressing as quickly as I could, I came down again and met the same rebukes from the same charming and smiling faces. "You are really the most outrageous man I know," observed Bonny Marshall, stopping me at the foot of the staircase. "Poor Sally has been so awfully worried that she hasn't any colour, and I've advised her simply to engage George as permanent proxy. He is taking your place this evening quite charmingly."