ould have heard it.

She started straight across the park, carrying her heavy bag, and
crossed the beech avenue, and so on to the trysting tree. A cold feeling
like some extra disquietude seemed to overcome her as she neared the
haw-haw and the copse. It was as if she feared and yet longed to get
there. But she resisted the temptation, and went straight on to the
little gate and so up the garden to the house.

Mrs. Porrit received her with her usual kindly greeting. All was calm
and peaceful, and while Halcyone controlled herself to talk in an
ordinary voice, the postman's knock was heard. He passed the Professor's
door on the road to Applewood and left the evening mail, when there
chanced to be any.

Mrs. Porrit received the letters--three of them--and then she adjusted
her spectacles, but took them off again.

"After all, since you are here, miss, perhaps as you write better than I
you will be so good as to redirect them on to the master. You know his
address, as usual." And she named an old-fashioned hotel in Jermyn
Street.

Halcyone took them in her cold, trembling fingers, and then nearly
dropped them on the floor, for the top envelope was addressed in the
handwriting of her beloved! She knew it well. Had she not, during the
past years, often seen such missives, from which the Professor had read
her scraps of news?

She carried it to the light and scrutinized the postmark. It was
"London," and posted that very morning early!

For a moment all was a blank, and she found herself grasping the back of
Cheiron's big chair to prevent herself from falling.

John had been in London at the moment when she was waiting by the tree!
What mystery was here?

At first the feeling was one of passionate relief. There had been no
accident, then; he had been obliged to go--there would be some
explanation forthcoming. Perhaps he had even written to her, too--and
she gave a bound forward, as though to run back to La Sarthe Chase. But
then she recollected the evening postman did not come to the house, and
they got no letters as Cheiron did, who was on the road. Hers could not
be there until the morning--she must wait patiently and see.

With consummate self-control she made her voice sound natural as she
said, "Oh, I am so late, Mrs. Porrit. I must go," and, bidding the woman
a gracious good evening, walked rapidly to the house. A telegram might
have come for her, and she had been out all day. What if her aunts had
opened i