She gave a sigh of relief when she saw the envelope with the letter inside, lying on the table beside her; and then she wrote the date on another sheet of paper. The second letter, however, seemed to require more careful composition than the first. She sat looking wistfully at the blank paper for more than half an hour, without making sufficient progress to write the name of the one whom the post office authorities call the addressee. She leant back in her chair and bit at the feather end of the pen for a long time. At last she tore up the sheet of paper and dropped the fragments with great tenderness into the Dresden vase that stood on a carved bracket on the wall. “I will not spoil his day,” she said pathetically. “I may have a good deal more to tell him by this time to-morrow. But I am not afraid to face anything that may come to pass. I know my own mind now--now.” Her maid came to enquire if she was at home, and if she would have tea in her boudoir or in one of the drawing-rooms. She replied that she was not at home and that she would like her tea brought to her at once. This was done and she found herself greatly refreshed, and able to enjoy an hour’s sleep before dinner, and to hear during that meal, her mother’s account of the two entertainments at which she had assisted, with a detailed description of some of the most innocuous of the dresses worn by the heroines of the lady correspondents’ columns. A word or two Lady Gwendolen threw in about the less interesting subject of the men who had walked through the garden of the Hyde Park Gate house, with the usual mournfulness of the men among five o’clock ices and angel-cakes, failed to move Josephine.