“It was the story that brought it back to you?” “Yes--that singular story.” “You were able to tell him the names of the people--the names that he was so anxious to find out?” “Oh, yes; I was able to--to satisfy him on this point. By the way, he and Josephine had some chat together in the garden--I could see them from my window.” Amber shook her head and then said: “Poor fellow!” “Why poor fellow, pray?” asked her father raising his eyebrows. “I am afraid that he--that is--I’m not quite sure that I should tell you that----” “Let me know what it is you are in doubt about, and I will give you my best advice on this doubtful and delicate point,” said he. “If you decide that I shouldn’t have told you will you let it be as if I hadn’t told you?” she said, clasping her hands over his arm. “Certainly I will,” he replied. “The terms are quite honourable.” “Then I may tell you that an hour after leaving this room he returned.” “For an umbrella--that’s what they do in plays: they always come back for the umbrella which, with the most careful inadvertency they have left behind them. But he didn’t come back to let you know that owing to the distractions of lunch, he had forgotten to mention that he loved you?” “Worse--much worse. He came to ask me if I could tell him if Joe had given her promise to marry someone.” “Heavens above! And did he specify the some one?” “Oh, dear, no; he had no one--that is to say, he had every one in his mind’s eye. He could not understand how it was possible that so sweet and lovely a girl should have reached the age of twenty-four without having given her promise to marry some man.” “It does seem a bit queer, doesn’t it? Well?” “That’s all. I told him, of course, that Joe was quite free.” “Of course. But that being so, where does your ‘poor fellow!’ come in. Why not ‘lucky fellow’?” Amber shook her head more sadly than she had shaken it before. “The pity of it! the pity of it!” she murmured. “Poor Joe!” “Poor yourself!” laughed Sir Creighton. “You cannot be ambitious enough to wish to include all the world in your pity. Why ‘poor Josephine’?” “She confessed to me that she hated him,” said Amber in a whisper--the whisper of an aspen--tremulous rather than sibilant. “What, hated him? I had no idea that she cared so much as that for him already,” said her father. “Are you sure that she confessed to hating him?” Amber’s hands dropped from his arm, but her eyes did not drop from his face. “Do you mean--you cannot mean--that--that all may yet be well?” she cried.