"Is it cheek to begin a letter like that to you? Only after last night I seem to know that you love me and that is all that really matters. I am coming to 6, Montague Square, on Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock to get my answer. Doesn't that sound precise? I would like to come to-day, but I won't because I don't want to hurry you. Oh, dear heart, I love you!--I have loved you for longer than you know of just at present. That is one of the things I am going to explain to you on Tuesday, "Yours ever, "DICK GRANT." Fanny was much perturbed by Joan's appearance when she was sufficiently awake to notice it. "My, honey, you do look bad," she gasped. "Daddy Brown will see I was talking the truth last night, which is a good thing in one way. He was most particularly anxious to see you last night, was very fussed when he found you hadn't come." She paused and studied Joan's face from under her lashes. "Did you meet him?" she inquired finally. "Yes," Joan admitted; she turned away from the other's inquisitive eyes. "He walked home with me." "I told him you had a headache and were not coming to supper with us," Fanny confessed. "It is no use being annoyed with me, honey. I thought it over and it seemed to me that by saying 'No' to him because of something that happened before he knew you, you were cutting off your nose to spite your face. Not that I personally should tell him," she added reflectively; "he is too straight himself to understand a woman doing wrong; but that is for you to decide. One thing I do know: it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his wanting to marry you; he is too much in love for that." She was saying aloud the fear which had knocked at Joan's heart all night. It might be true that Dick was too much in love to let what she had to tell him stand between them. But afterwards, when love had had time to cool, when trust and good-fellowship would be called on to take the place of passion, when he saw her, perhaps, with his child in her arms, how would he look at her then? Would he not remember and regret, would not a shadow stand between them, a shadow from the one sin which no man can forgive in a woman? She was like a creature brought to bay; he had guessed that she loved him; what arguments could she use, how stand firm in her denial against that knowledge?