ration: JOHN'S MOTHER HEARS THAT HIS MISSION HAS BEEN A FAILURE
"I'VE FAILED. MOTHER!"]

"It is time," I answered. "But if you please, it seems to me Miss Grace
and I should first take them up together. Has she spoken to you in any
way that might lead you to think she would prefer our engagement to be
broken?"

"No, sir. There has only been a vagueness and indefiniteness which I did
not like."

"Had my affairs not mended, Colonel Sheraton, I could not have blamed
any of you for breaking the engagement. If conditions prove to be
practically the same now as then, it is she who must decide her course
and mine."

"That is perfectly honorable. I have no criticism to offer. I have only
her happiness at heart."

"Then, if you please, sir, since I am rather awkwardly situated here, I
should like very much to see Miss Grace this morning."

He bowed in his lofty way and left me. Within a half hour a servant
brought me word that Miss Grace would see me in the drawing-room.

She was seated in a wide, low chair near the sunny window, half hid by
the leafy plants that grew in the boxes there. She was clad in loose
morning wear over ample crinoline, her dark hair drawn in broad bands
over the temples, half confined by a broad gold comb, save two long
curls which hung down her neck at either side. It seemed to me she was
very thin--thinner and darker than ever. Under her wide eyes were heavy
circles. She held out her hand to me, and it lay cold and lifeless in my
own. I made some pleasant talk of small matters as I might, and soon as
I could arrived at the business of the letter I had received.

"Perhaps I have been a little hurried, after all, in classing myself as
an absolute pauper," I explained as she read. "You see, I must go out
there and look into these things."

"Going away again?" She looked up at me, startled.

"For a couple of weeks. And when I come back, Miss Grace--"

So now I was up to the verge of that same old, definite question.

She sat up in the chair as though pulling herself together in some
sudden resolve, and looked me straight in the face.

"Jack," she said, "why should we wait?"

"To be sure," said I. "Only I do not want you to marry a pauper if any
act of my own can make him better than a pauper in the meantime."

"You temporize," she said, bitterly. "You are not glad. Yet you came to
me only last spring, and you--"

"I come to you now, Miss Grace," I said.

"Ah, what a difference between