egin to get up an interest in it as my
investigation proceeds. Shall I call the day after to-morrow and tell
you my adventures?"

"I think you'd better stick to the old plan, and let me have the result
of your work in the form of a diary," answered Sheldon. And with this
the two men parted.

It was now half-past two o'clock; it would be half-past three before
Valentine could present himself at the Lawn--a very seasonable hour at
which to call upon Mrs. Sheldon with his offering of a box for the new
play.

An omnibus conveyed him to Bayswater at a snail's pace, and with more
stoppages than ever mortal omnibus was subjected to before, as it
seemed to that one eager passenger. At last the fading foliage of the
Park appeared between the hats and bonnets of Valentine's opposite
neighbours. Even those orange tawny trees reminded him of Charlotte.
Beneath such umbrage had he parted from her. And now he was going to
see the bright young face once more. He had been away from town about a
fortnight; but taken in relation with Miss Halliday, that fortnight
seemed half a century.

Chrysanthemums and china-asters beautified Mr. Sheldon's neat little
garden, and the plate-glass windows of his house shone with all their
wonted radiance. It was like the houses one sees framed and glazed in
an auctioneer's office--the greenest imaginable grass, the bluest
windows, the reddest bricks, the whitest stone. "It is a house that
would set my teeth on edge, but for the one sweet creature who lives in
it," Valentine thought to himself, as he waited at the florid iron
gate, which was painted a vivid ultramarine and picked out with gold.

He tried in vain to catch a glimpse of some feminine figure in the
small suburban garden. No flutter of scarlet petticoat or flash of
scarlet plume revealed the presence of the divinity.

The prim maid-servant informed him that Mrs. Sheldon was at home, and
asked if he would please to walk into the drawing-room.

Would he please? Would he not have been pleased to walk into a raging
furnace if there had been a chance of meeting Charlotte Halliday amid
the flames? He followed the maid-servant into Mrs. Sheldon's
irreproachable apartment, where the show books upon the show table were
ranged at the usual mathematically correct distances from one another,
and where the speckless looking-glasses and all-pervading French polish
imparted a chilly aspect to the chamber. A newly-lighted fire was
smouldering in the