I forgot to tell you that when I was sketching her I asked if she could bring something pink to wear, preferably coral. She came the next time with a string of the most beautiful rose-topazes I have ever seen, set in a most curious old gold design. It was that necklace and none other that the woman with the bundle wore, half concealed, when she came here. To-day—it is yesterday really, since I am finishing this at three _A. M._—the messenger boy brought me a telegram. It was from my love. It had been sent from Boston, and it read: “Destroy the picture, for my sake. It tells too much of both of us.” The message was unsigned. I have destroyed the picture. Help me! ——F. S. CHAPTER IV—AN INQUIRY “Am I running a Strangers’ Rest here?” Francis Sedgwick asked of himself when he emerged upon his porch the morning after Kent’s visit. The occasion of this query was a man stretched flat on the lawn, with his feet propped up comfortably against the stone wall. In this recumbent posture he was achieving the somewhat delicate feat of smoking a long, thin clay pipe. Except for this plebeian touch he was of the most unimpeachable elegance. His white serge suit was freshly pressed. His lavender silk hose, descending without a wrinkle under his buckskin shoes, accorded with a lavender silk tie and lavender striped shirt. A soft white hat covered his eyes against the sun glare. To put a point to this foppishness, a narrow silken ribbon, also pure white, depending from his lapel buttonhole, suggested an eye-glass in his pocket. Sedgwick, who had risen late, having returned to his house at daybreak after delivering his manuscript at Kent’s hotel, regarded this sartorial marvel with a doubt as to whether it might not be a figment of latent dreams. Making a détour across the grass, he attained to a side view of the interloper’s face. It repaid the trouble. It was a remarkable face, both in contour and in coloring. From chin to cheek, the skin was white, with a tint of blue showing beneath; but the central parts of the face were bronzed. The jaw was long, lean and bony. The cheek-bones were high; the mouth was large, fine-cut, and firm; the nose, solid, set like a rock. At the sound of a footstep, the man pushed his hat downward, revealing a knobby forehead and half-closed eyes in which there was a touch of somberness, of brooding. The artist remembered having seen that type of physiognomy on the Venetian coins of the sixteenth century, the likenesses in bronze, of men who were of iron and gold,—scholars, rulers, and poets. The eyes of the still face opened wide, and fixed themselves on Sedgwick, and the expression of melancholy vanished. “Good morning,” said the artist, and then all but recoiled from the voice that replied, so harsh and raucous it was. “You rise late,” it said. “I hear your opinion on it,” retorted Sedgwick, a bit nettled. “Am I to infer that you have been waiting for me?” “You wouldn’t go far wrong.”