equire. When you are away on your frequent excursions to all parts
of the world it will be very easy to provide yourself a servant. Will you
try for a few weeks how well I can supply, or have the place supplied, of
this man, whom you intend in any case to dismiss? This is all. Next week,
the doctor thinks, you may be moved to a lounge, and perhaps the week
after be able to travel, or at farthest the week following.

I acknowledge to the womanish feeling of being exultant at the idea of the
envy I shall awaken in the breasts of your adoring circle of lady
friends--my lady cousins among them--in having, spite of my
unattractiveness, secured the husband they have long striven by every wile
to win. Ah! they little know, and I trust never may, why I, without
seeking, have ensnared their _rara avis_ to be my legal bondsman. Rather a
contradiction in terms!

The pretty fiction of our sudden marriage being a renewal of an old
love-affair is more of an untruth than I am used to letting pass, and yet
has enough truth in it to make it reality, since you were the hero of my
girlish dreams. So we will let the explanation thus worded, which you have
written to my uncles and stated verbally to Mrs. Keller, stand; also, that
the undue haste was caused by your pressing need of me during your
accident. I think, indeed, from my cousin Harry's letter yesterday, and
one from Shelton last week, they have taken the idea that we have been
spending the summer together, and that you were following me home when you
were stayed in your mad career by a broken leg.

I am done; are you not thankful? There have been some things in this
letter very hard to say, which, if I were braver or knew you better, I
should have liked to be more outspoken about. But enough has, I think,
been said to make you appreciate my earnest desires and my reasons for
them. I am most truly,

PERCY.

And he, prone upon his back this warm September day, read this long
epistle from his new wife, then laid it down and closing his eyes murmured
softly, "What a strange little puss it is!" Lying in the dim light her
hand had created for him, he thought of his own troubles and hers, just as
she had stated them. The blood would flush up to his brow as her cool
ignoring of his surpassing attractions, to which all other women accorded
their full meed of praise, rose up before him. He of whom it had been said
if he beckoned with his finger women left their duties, gave up their very