Kingsland?" he
slowly repeated. "What under heaven can he have to write to my lady
about?"

"I really don't know, Sir Everard," rejoined Sybilla, "I only know he
asked me to deliver it. He had been looking for my lady's maid, I
fancy, in vain. It is probably something about his tiresome pictures.
Will you please to take it, Sir Everard, or shall I wait until my lady
awakes?"

"You may leave it."

He spoke the words mechanically, quite stunned by the overwhelming fact
that this audacious photographic person dared to write to his wife.
Miss Silver passed him, placed the twisted paper on one of the inlaid
tables, and left the room with a triumphant light in her deriding-black
eyes.

"I have trumped my first trick," Sybilla thought, as she walked away,
"and I fancy the game will be all my own shortly. Sir Everard will
open and read Mr. Parmalee's little _billet-doux_ the instant he is
alone."

But just here Sybilla was mistaken. Sir Everard did not open the
tempting twisted note. He glanced at it once as it lay on the table,
but he made no attempt to take it.

"She will show it to me when she awakes," he said, with compressed
lips, "and then I will have this impertinent Yankee kicked from the
house."

He sat beside her, watching her while she slept, with a face quite
colorless between conflicting love and torturing doubt.

Nearly an hour passed before Harriet awoke. The great dark eyes opened
in wide surprise at sight of that pale, intense face bending so
devotedly over her.

"You here, Everard?" she said. "How long have I been asleep? How long
have you been here?"

"Over an hour, Harrie."

"So long? I had no idea of going asleep when I lay down; but my head
ached with a dull, hopeless pain, and--What is that?"

She had caught sight of the note lying on the table.

"You will scarcely believe it, but that stranger--that American
artist--has had the impertinence to address that note to you. Sybilla
Silver brought it here. Shall I ring for your maid and send it back
unopened, and order him out of the house for his pains?"

"No!" said Harriet, impetuously. "I must read it."

She snatched it up, tore it open, and, walking over to the window, read
the scrawl.

"Harriet!"

She turned slowly round at her name spoken by her husband as that
adoring husband had never spoken it before.

"Give me that note."

He held out his hand. She crushed it firmly in her own, looking him
straight in the e