feelings and keeps me in constant hope of further news of you.
"As ever, your affectionate playmate,
"MORT."
Notwithstanding all the hopes and fears of the past few days, there was
the reply, after all, and Mabel, after reading it through three times,
concluded that "Mort" must be "splendid," and that this sort of sport
was far ahead of anything she had yet attempted. It combined, so she
argued, all the spice of a heavy flirtation with the advantage of a
strict incognito, and, with judicious management, she thought that it
might be carried on in perfect safety for some time to come.
Mr. Moreley was worse than usual that evening; dinner, without the
articles which Mabel should have brought from the village, was not a
success, and such a catastrophe always aggravated his disease. Having
learned who was to blame for it, it was many days before he could
forgive or forget his daughter's inhuman treatment of her much-suffering
papa, so that she was left even more than usual to her own devices, and
spent a deal of her time either with novels or her writing-case in the
romantic corners of the pine wood or on the rocks and along the beach by
the sea.
Dudley's letter had been answered one afternoon, when the late sun was
throwing long shadows and touching the distant sails upon the ocean with
a shade of delicate pink, when a gentle breeze was only rippling the
surface of the water and the waves were only murmuring soft music upon
the sand; and if but half of the tender emotion which these surroundings
gave birth to were transferred to her paper, Dudley, if his heart were
at all as he had represented it, must have found in her reply an ample
reward for his strange constancy. Circumstances, at any rate, went to
show that it had been very welcome and pleasing to its recipient, for it
was scarcely three days later that a second missive for Miss Jane
Jennings reached the Stillton office and was duly claimed by Mabel
before any possible accident could throw it into other hands. She had
perused it with marked pleasure; it had contained many fresh allusions
to "childhood's happy hour," many additional and very original accounts
of doings in their fancied youth, several frank compliments, and a
reiterated and very urgent request for a photograph. She had allowed
several days to pass in considering what notice to take of this somewhat
impudent demand. At one time she almost concluded to let Mr. Dudley drop
altogether. W
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