nimous enough to be thinking of accepting a
compromising situation to save her? What he had said sounded very
unselfish. Of course, she couldn't allow him to. What a pity he was not
an American--or something quite ordinary. Then she might----

"There's nothing for it but to write to the paper, I suppose?" he said
ruefully.

"I--I suppose not." The comment was dragged from Jeannette in a tone as
unconsciously reluctant as his was rueful.

Chilminster sighed. "It's so rough on you."

Jeannette felt a consuming anxiety to know whether his sympathy was
occasioned by the announcement or the suggested denial of it.

"And on you, too," she admitted. "What were you thinking--how did you
propose to phrase it?"

"I?" he asked apprehensively. "To be quite frank. I haven't got as far
as that. Never wrote to the papers in my life," he added
pusillanimously.

"But _I_ can't," argued Jeannette. Her determination of two hours ago
had vanished into the Ewigkeit.

Chilminster had an inspiration. "What do you say if we do it together?"

While she digested this expedient he fetched paper and pencil, and then
sat gazing at the ceiling for inspiration.

"Well?" she queried at the end of a minute.

"How ought one to begin these things?" asked the desperate man.

Jeannette cogitated deeply. "It's so difficult to say what one wants to
a stranger in a letter, isn't it?" she hesitated. "Wouldn't a telegram
do?"

"By Jove! Yes; and simply say: 'Miss Urmy wishes to deny----'"

"In _my_ name!" exclaimed Jeannette.

"Well--you are the person aggrieved."

"I really don't think it's fair to put the whole of the responsibility
on my shoulders," she demurred.

"No, I suppose not," Chilminster admitted grudgingly. "How would this
do: 'Miss Urmy and Lord Chilminster wish to contradict their
engagement----'"

"But that implies that there _was_ an engagement!"

Chilminster pondered the deduction. "So it does. I see. People would
jump to the conclusion that we were in a desperate hurry to alter our
minds!"

"And, of course, we haven't."

"Y-es. I don't know how you feel about it, but if there's one thing I
dislike it's tittle-tattle about my private affairs."

"Horrid!" shivered Jeannette. "What _are_ we to do?"

Her tone was so hopeless, so full of tears, that it melted Chilminster.
Susceptibilities that had been simmering within him for an hour past
came unexpectedly to the boil; and as they did so the difficulty
vanished.