sight-seeing. When I proposed to
come alone this morning, the dear soul said:

'"Well, I should hope thee could. Only two straight blocks between
here and the gate at Fifty-seventh Street, and if thee can manage to
get lost with all those guards and guides, to say nothing of the maps
and pictures, thee is a stupid niece, and thee may just go back to thy
Aunt Charlotte Havermeyer." If Aunt Charl could only hear that! Well,
dear, I have promised myself a happy time here with Aunt Ann when she
is not occupied with her meditations, and yourself soon, and without
Aunt C.; but, alas! everybody will visit the Fair; and yesterday,
upon Midway, whom should I see but M. Voisin! He was attired as I have
never seen him before, quite _negligee_, you know, and wearing a
Turkish fez. It was very becoming. He did not see me, and for this I
was thankful. I did not come to the World's Fair to see M. Voisin, and
even to please Aunt Charl I can't make myself like him.'

I put down this letter and smiled over its sweet ingenuousness, and
singularly enough I joined the fair writer in heartily disliking M.
Voisin.

'He was altogether too conveniently near at the scene of that unlucky
proposal,' I muttered to myself, and then I turned to the other
letter. I wanted to see what I could make, between the two, out of
young Lossing.

'I have asked you twice,' Miss O'Neil wrote, 'about your affair with
young Mr. Lossing. Your aunt is entirely at a loss, only she declares
she is sure that you have refused him, and that in some way he has
offended you; and I thought him almost perfect, a knight _sans
reproche_, etc.; and he is so handsome, and frank, and manly. What
happened, dear? It is so strange that he should vanish so utterly from
society where he was made so much of; and no one seems to know where
he went, or when, or why, or how. Gerry says he was a perfect
companion, "and as honourable as the sun." There, I'll say no more.'

My reading was broken in upon at this point by a prolonged chuckle,
and I looked up to see Brainerd wideawake and staring at me.

'Well,' he queried promptly, 'have you found out her name?'

'Yes; it is June Jenrys.' As I spoke I returned Miss O'Neil's letter
to its decorated envelope, and replaced the two in the bag. 'I'll tell
you about them,' I said, as I put it aside. Somehow I felt a sudden
reluctance at the thought of seeing those two letters in the hands and
under the eyes of an inveterate joker like Dave.