"I do promise--now!" said Kate, and departed with the air of one who had done a noble deed, while Fenie hurried to Trif and told her that Kate already knew about that letter, despite all that had been done to keep any knowledge of it from her, and Trif wondered how she could have learned, and said that Harry must have told her, and Fenie retorted that Harry was no tell-tale child, and that it must have been Jermyn or the Admiral, and that whichever it was he was real mean, for hadn't Trif, while writing the letter, planned merely what had come to pass, to the manifest delight of the parties most nearly interested? Kate improved her first opportunity to warn her brother against long engagements, and Harry asked whether she herself was willing to practice what she preached, and Kate bravely answered that she was. "But let that subject rest, for the present," she said. "I've learned some things accidentally to-day, and I don't wonder that you have been so unhappy for a day or two. You needn't be afraid to call on Fenie this evening. There will be nothing unpleasant." "My dear sister!" exclaimed Harry, "what are you talking about? What have you learned, and where, and how?" "Entirely by accident. Trixy----" "Trixy? Goodness! Will that child never cease to make trouble?" Then Harry dashed out of the room. CHAPTER XXVII. THREE DAYS GRACE. The Admiral worried himself almost sick over Phil Highwood's inability to find the missing sketches, and his condition of mind and body was not improved by a meeting which he had with the projector of the new mining company. That gentleman insisted that the sketches should be filed at once, for his promise from his fellow-incorporators had been merely verbal, and he warned the Admiral that such promises were frequently ignored in business, and that he, the projector, would be powerless to force the matter should his associates vote against him. The Admiral explained the cause of the delay and the importance of the matter to Jermyn in particular, and this affected the projector so strongly, he once having been a poor young man engaged to be married, that he succeeded in exacting from the directors a written promise that if the sketches were deposited with the company within three days from date the stock should be delivered; otherwise it would be disposed of elsewhere. All this caused the old gentleman to once more speak to Jermyn about the matter, and Jermyn, noting the condition to which excitement had brought his friend, and not knowing that the Admiral had already made a clean breast of the matter to the Highwoods, one morning went to throw himself upon Trif's mercy, but, as already intimated, he saw only Fenie. He succeeded in telling her the story, but when he learned that the sketches had disappeared he became about as miserable as the Admiral.