“Look!” she exclaimed. “From your poor, afflicted Pa! To announce the sad news!” Diana, fresh from her bath, her hair hanging about her and the faint pink of her cheeks contrasting becomingly with the pale blue of her dressing-gown, looked up rather wistfully. “Do open it!” she said. “I’m sure it will be a beautiful letter! Pa can express himself quite eloquently when he thinks it worth while. I remember he wrote a most charming ‘gush’ of sympathy to a woman who had lost her husband suddenly,--she was a titled person, and Pa worships titles,--and when he had posted it he said: ‘Thank God that’s done with! It’s bad enough to write a letter of condolence at all, but when you have to express sorrow for the death of an old fool who is better out of the world than in it, it’s a positive curse!’” She laughed, adding: “I know he isn’t really sorry for _my_ supposed ‘death’; if the real, bare, brutal truth were told, he’s glad!” Sophy Lansing paused in the act of opening the letter. “Diana!” she exclaimed in a tone of thrilling indignation. “If he’s such an old brute as that----” “Oh, no, he isn’t really an old brute!” Diana averred, gently. “He’s just a very ordinary sort of man. Lots of people pretend to be sorry for the deaths of their friends and relatives when they’re not; and half the mourning in the world is sheer hypocrisy! Pa’s a bit of a coward, too--he hates the very thought of death, and when some person he has known commits this last indiscretion of dying, he forgets it as quickly as possible. I don’t blame him, I’m sure. Everyone can’t feel deeply--some people can’t feel at all.” Here Sophy opened the letter and glanced at it. Presently she looked up. “Shall I read it to you?” she asked. Diana nodded. With a small, preparatory cough, which sounded rather like a suppressed giggle, Sophy thereupon read the following effusion: “Dear Miss Lansing,