It was a very difficult and delicate task. She had learnt to call him Frank, but could she address him so on paper? ‘Dear Mr. Dennis’ was too formal, and ‘My dear Mr. Dennis’ was, under the circumstances, not to be thought of. She eventually wrote, ‘Dear Frank’ (how dreadfully familiar it looked—yet a fortnight ago it would have seemed natural enough), ‘what delays the wheels of your chariot? If it is business I am sure you must have had time to build a cathedral. My uncle misses you very much’—this sounded unkind; it suggested that no one else regretted his absence, so she added—‘as we all do.’ Here with a little sigh she underlined _all_, so as to make it appear that she regretted him only as William Henry did, no more and no less. ‘I hope, for my uncle’s sake, you will come back less of an infidel in Shakespearean affairs. The lock of hair, of the discovery of which you have doubtless heard, has, by-the-bye, thanks to the chivalry of “The Templar,” been given to me, so you will understand that any aspersion cast upon its genuineness is a personal matter. The weather is wet—though it should make no difference to an architect, since he can roof himself anywhere—so there is no excuse for your lingering in the country for pleasure’s sake.’ Had she dared to say so, she might have hinted very prettily that with him the sunshine would return to Norfolk Street; but she was no longer fancy free. Even as it was, sisterly as she had endeavoured to make the tone of her letter, she feared she might have given him some involuntary encouragement. It was terrible to her to feel so confident as she did that on the receipt of it Frank Dennis would start for London. CHAPTER XIII. THE PROFESSION OF FAITH.