' she brightened up to tell me, 'is almost as
good here as it used to be in the Trust Company for _much_ harder work.'
She's a sweet old thing--must have been quite a beauty once--and I wish
you could see old Drewitt's manner with her--so courteous and
affectionate--and hers with him--so adoring and confiding. It's
wonderful!

"It will take some time to get all the information I want from the old
man. He has the papers and he is quite willing to explain everything,
but we spend the larger part of every day in entertaining the old lady
and keeping her happy and unsuspicious."

A series of such letters covering several placid weeks reduced Miss
Knowles to a condition of moodiness and abstraction which all the
resources at her command failed to dissipate. In vain were the
practical blandishments of Mr. Stevenson; in vain her mother's shopping
triumphs; in vain were dinners given in her honor and receptions at
which she reigned supreme. None of her other experiments had resulted in
an engagement--an immunity which she now humbly attributed to the
watchful Jimmie--and she was dismayed at the determined and
matter-of-fact way in which she was called upon to fulfil her promise.
"If only Jimmie were at home!" she realized, "he would save me." This
was when the happy day was yet a great way off. "If only Jimmie would
come home," she wailed as the weeks grew to months, and even the comfort
of his letters failed her. For two months there had been no news of him,
and Fate--and Mr. Stevenson--were very near when, at last, she heard
from him again. He sent a telegram nearly as brief as his first letter.

"I am coming home," it announced, "I am coming home, and I'm going to
be married."

And the simple little words, waited for so long, remembered so clearly,
and coming, at last, so late, did what all Jimmie's more eloquent
pleadings had failed to do.

Sylvia Knowles, a creature made of vanities, realized that she loved
better than all her other vanities her place in this one man's regard.
No contemplation of Mr. Stevenson's estate on the Hudson, his shooting
lodge on a Scottish moor, his English abbey, and his Italian villa could
nerve her for the first meeting with Jimmie, could fortify her against
his first laughing repetition:

"_You_ married to Gilbert Stevenson," or his later scornful, "You
_married_ to Gilbert Stevenson."

So she dismissed Mr. Stevenson with as little feeling as she had annexed
him, and sought comfort i