mile
which he did not find too broadly sympathetic. He went
up the stairs two steps at a time, whistling like a
schoolboy.

"Lady Halifax says," he announced, taking immediate
possession of Janet where she stood, and drawing her to
a seat beside him on the lounge, "that the least we can
do by way of reparation is to arrange our wedding-trip
in their society. She declares she will wait any reasonable
time; but I assured her delicately that her idea of
compensation was a little exaggerated."

Janet looked at him with an, absent smile. "Yes, I think
so," she said, but her eyes were preoccupied, and the
lover in him resented it.

"What is it?" he asked. "What has happened, dear?"

She looked down at an open letter in her hand, and for
a moment said nothing. "I don't know whether I ought to
tell you; but it would be a relief."

"Can there be anything you ought not to tell me?" he
insisted tenderly.

"Perhaps, on the other hand, I ought," she said
reflectively. "It may help you to a proper definition of
my character, and then--you may think less of me. Yes,
I think I ought."

"Darling, for Heaven's sake don't talk nonsense!"

"I had a letter--this letter--a little while ago, from
Elfrida Bell." She held it out to him. "Read it."

Kendal hesitated and scanned her face. She was smiling
now; she had the look of half-amused dismay that might
greet an ineffectual blow. He took the letter.

"If it is from Miss Bell," he said at a suggestion from
his conscience, "I fancy, for some reason, it is not
pleasant."

"No," she replied, "it is not pleasant."

He unfolded the letter, recognizing the characteristic
broad margins and the repressed rounded perpendicular
hand with its supreme effort after significance, and his
thought reflected a tinge of his old amused curiosity.
It was only a reflection, and yet it distinctly embodied
the idea that he might be on the brink of a further
discovery. He glanced at Janet again: her hands were
clasped in her lap, and she was looking straight before
her with smilingly grave lips and lowered lids, which
nevertheless gave him a glimpse of retrospection. He
felt the beginnings of indignation, yet he looked back
at the letter acquisitively; its interest was intrinsic.

"I feel that I can no longer hold myself in honor," he
read, "if I refrain further from defining the personal
situation between us as it appears to me. That I have
let nearly three weeks go by without doing it you