l towns. 'There seems to be some mistake,'
he said. 'I was going into the Somerset five minutes ago when Hill
coralled me. He told me that his wife was giving a dinner, and that at
the last moment one of the bidden had wired to the effect that he was
prevented from coming. Whereupon Mrs. Hill had packed him off to the
club, with instructions to bring back the first man he met. I happened
to be that man.' He took up the card. 'Lord Alfred is, I fancy, the
delinquent. My name,' he added, 'is Mr. Stitt--Ferris Stitt,' he
continued, as though apologizing for its inconsequence.

"After that we got on famously. In a day or two he came to the house.
When he left the world was larger. He knew nothing about poetry. He had
never so much as heard of Fichte. Herbert Spencer was to him a name and
nothing more. The only works of ornamental literature which he seemed to
have read were the Arabian Nights, which he had forgotten, and something
of Dickens, which had put him to sleep. He did not know one note of
music from another. But he had hunted big game in Africa, in Bengal, and
he had penetrated Thibet. He had been in Iceland and among the Caribs.
No carpet knight was he.

"My dear, I had not seen him five times before I felt myself going. I
think he knew it. But I had been cheated before, and so well that I held
on with all my strength. While I was holding on, he disappeared. Not a
word, not a line, not even so much as a p. p. c. In the course of time,
through the merest accident, I learned that he was in Yucatan. Six
months later I caught a glimpse of him in the street. Presently he
called.

"At once, without so much as a preamble, he told me he had gone away
that in absence he might learn whether I was as dear to him as he
thought. He hesitated a moment. 'Will you let me love you?' he asked.
'You have been prudent,' I answered; 'let me be prudent, too.' Then I
told him of my disenchantments. I told him how difficult I found it to
discover what men really were. I told him, as I have told you, that it
seemed to me, if an intelligent girl admired her brother, it was because
that brother was assuredly an admirable man. And I added that I would
accept no man until I had the same opportunities of judging him as a
sister has of judging her brother. Besides, I said, I have yet to know
what love may be. It was then that we made the agreement of which you
disapprove. After all, it was my own suggestion, and, if unconventional,
in what d