y could struggle out of the cavity which
her weight had made in the Chesterfield Douglas had departed. She
heard the close of the hall door, immediately followed by the click of
the garden gate. Yes, he was _gone_! And Cossie, who all the time had
been listening on the top of the stairs, instantly descended like a
wolf on the fold. She would have run out bareheaded after Douglas, but
that her more prudent sister actually restrained her by violent
physical force; and then, what a scene she made! Oh, what
recriminations and angry speeches and reproaches she showered upon her
unhappy parent!

"You told me to sound him about an engagement, and I did. Oh, but it
was a hateful job, and here's my thanks!" whimpered Mrs. Larcher. "He
looked awfully white and stern, and said he only likes you as a cousin,
and that he had no intention of anything--and I believe him. It was
only in the last two months, since Freddy Soames broke it off, that
you've gone out of your way to hang on to Douglas. I'm sure I wish
there had been something in it--he's a dear good boy, and I could love
him like a son," and the poor lady sobbed aloud.

"You bungled the whole thing, of course!" cried her ungrateful
offspring, "I might have known you would put your foot in it; you've
let him slip through your fingers and just ruined my last chance. Oh,
if I'd only talked to him myself, I'd have been on my way to Burma in
six months!"

Then Cossie broke down, buried her head in a musty cushion, and wept
sore.

However, after a little time, the broken-hearted damsel recovered; her
feelings were elastic, and she allowed herself to be revived with a
stiff whisky and soda and a De Reske cigarette. On the following day
she had so far recovered as to be able to make a careful toilet and
walk out, to call upon her two most intimate pals, in order to inform
them--in the very strictest confidence--that she was engaged to her
cousin, Douglas Shafto, who had just got a splendid appointment in
Burma and would come home in two years! Then she added impressively,
"I don't want this given out--mother would be _furious_; but the first
time you come across him I don't mind if you whisper the news to Freddy
Soames."

Cossie sent her cousin a heart-broken letter of farewell, full of
underlined words and vague expressions of despair--a portion of which
she had copied from a dramatic love scene in a novel. She implored him
to write to her, and remained "his devo