d to make more extended arrangements, and references to that
well-known rendezvous, "Eternity," fell on my ears from time to time.
Evidently Sylvia had no very saving belief in Eternity, for I heard her
say that they might see how they got on in Paris for a start. Then it
would be time enough to talk of Eternity. This and other remarks of
Sylvia's considerably predisposed me towards her. Having concluded
their arrangements for the heaven of the morrow, they rose to take a
stroll along the boulevards. As they did so, I touched Orlando's
shoulder and begged his attention for a moment. Though an entire
stranger to him, I had, I said, a matter of extreme importance to
communicate to him, and I hoped, therefore, that it would suit his
convenience to meet me at the same place in an hour and a half. As I
said this, I flashed his wife's ring in the light so obviously that he
was compelled to notice it.

"Wherever did you get that?" he gasped, no little surprised and
agitated.

"From your wife," I answered, rapidly moving away. "Be sure to be here
at eleven."

I slipped away into the crowd, and spent my hour and a half in
persuading Rosalind that her husband was no doubt a little infatuated,
but nevertheless the most faithful husband in the world. If she would
only leave all to me, by this time to-morrow night, if not a good many
hours before, he should be in her arms as safe as in the Bank. It did
my heart good to see how happy this artistic adaptation of the truth
made her; and I must say that she never had a wiser friend.

When eleven came, I was back in my seat at the Cafe du Ciel. Orlando
too was excitedly punctual.

"Well, what is it?" he hurried out, almost before he had sat down.

"What will you do me the honour of drinking?" I asked calmly.

"Oh, drink be d----d!" he said; "what have you to tell me?"

"I'm glad to hear you rap out such a good honest oath," I said; "but I
should like a drink, for all that, and if I may say so, you would be
none the worse for a brandy and soda, late as it is."

When the drinks had come, I remarked to him quietly, but not without
significance: "The meaning of this ring is that your wife is here, and
very wretched. By an accident I have been privileged with her
friendship; and I may say, to save time, that she has told me the whole
story.

"What happily she has not been able to tell me, and what I need hardly
say she will never know from me, I overheard, in the interests