f his usual one, and read the note
four times. Then he lay back, wrapping his dressing-gown--a fine
specimen of Cairene embroidery--closely round him, shut his eyes, and
seemed to go to sleep. All he said to himself was:--

"Jimmy writes a very dull letter."

At half-past nine, Miss Haddon's house reverberated in a hollow manner
with the barbarous music of a gong, the dressing-gong. Claude heard it
very unsympathetically, and felt rather inclined merely to take off his
dressing-gown, as an act of mute defiance, and go deliberately to sleep,
instead of getting up and putting things on. But he remembered his
manners wearily, and slid out of bed and into a carefully-warmed bath
that was prepared in the neighbouring dressing-room. Having completed an
intricate toilette, and tied a marvellously subtle tie, shot with
rigorously subdued, but voluptuous colours, he sauntered downstairs in
time to be thoroughly immersed in the full clamour of the second--or
breakfast--gong, which he encountered in the hall.

"Why will people wake the dead merely because they are going to eat a
boiled egg and a bit of toast?" he asked himself as he entered the
breakfast-room.

Miss Haddon was standing by the window, reading letters in the proper
English manner. The sun lay on her grey hair, which she wore dressed
high, and void of cap.

"You are very punctual," she said with a smile. "I was going to send up
to know whether you would prefer to breakfast in your room. My nephew
told me you might like to. I shall be glad to have your company. Jimmy
has run away and left us together, I find."

"Yes, Jimmy has run away," Claude answered, beginning slowly to feel the
full force of Jimmy's perfidy. He looked at Miss Haddon's cheerful, rosy
face, and bright brown eyes, and wondered whether she had been in the
plot.

"I hope you will not be bored," Miss Haddon went on, as they sat down
together, the intonation of her melodious elderly voice seeming to
dismiss the supposition, even while she suggested it. "But, indeed, I
think it is almost impossible to be bored in the country."

Claude, who was always either in London or Paris, looked frankly
astonished. In handing him his cup of tea, Miss Haddon noticed it.

"You don't agree with me?" she asked.

"I cannot disagree, at least," he said; "because, to tell the truth, I
am always in towns."

"Probably you are happy there then," she rejoined, with a briskness that
was agreeable, because it was n