our mother's old trunks."

Left alone, Mary Coombe drank her tea, which after all was not very
cold. She was not really interested in the letter, now that she had got
it. Had not a vagrant breeze tossed it, obtrusively, upon her lap, she
would probably not have looked at it.

Listlessly she picked it up, opened it, glanced at the firm, clear
writing....

A sharp, tingling shock ran through her. It was as if some one had
knocked, loudly, at dead of night at a closed door! That writing--how
absurdly fanciful she was getting!

"Dearest wife," she read, "at last I can call you 'wife' without
fear"--the vagrant breeze, which had tossed the letter into her lap,
tossed it off again. Her glance followed it, fascinated!

Of course she had dreamed the writing? She had been terribly troubled by
dreams of late. But what had Amy said about finding the paper in her
mother's trunk? The whole thing was a fantastic nightmare. She had but
to lean forward, pick up the letter, read it properly and laugh at her
foolishness.

But it was a long time before she found the strength to pick it up. When
she did, she read it quietly to the end with its scrawled "H." Then she
read it over again, word by word. Her expression was one of terror
and amaze.

When she had finished she looked up, over the pleasant garden, with
blank eyes. Her face was ashen.

"He came," she said aloud. "He came! But--_what did she tell him when he
came_?"

The garden had no answer to the question. Somewhere could be heard a
girl's laugh and the sharp bark of a protesting puppy. Mary Coombe drew
her hand across her eyes as if to clear them of film and, trying to
rise, slipped down beside the elm-tree seat, a soft blot of whiteness on
the green.

They found her there when they had finished washing the puppy, but
though she came quickly to herself under their eager ministrations, she
would not tell them what had caused her sudden illness. To all their
questionings she answered pettishly, "Nothing! Nothing but the heat."

CHAPTER XXI

When a man of thirty-five has at last shaken himself free from the
burden of an unhappy love affair, he is not particularly disposed to
welcome an emotional reawakening. He knows the pains and penalties too
well; the fire of Spring, he has learned, can burn as well as brighten.
Callandar thought that he had done with love, and a growing suspicion
that love had not done with him brought little less than panic. Upon the
occ