ing after dress makers, John after licenses, Cook's
tickets, a best man, and all the impedimenta of a marriage. The
intercourse of the lovers was much interrupted, and to this Miss Bussey
attributed the low spirits that Mary sometimes displayed.

"There, there, my dear," she would say impatiently--for the cheerful
old lady hated long faces--"you'll have enough of him and to spare by
and by."

Curiously this point of view did not comfort Mary. She liked John very
much, she esteemed him even more than she liked him, he would, she
thought, have made an ideal brother. Ah, why had she not made a brother
of him while there was time? Then she would have enjoyed his constant
friendship all her life; for it was not with him as with that foolish
boy Charlie, all or nothing. John was reasonable; he would not have
threatened--well, reading--his letter one way, Charlie almost seemed to
be tampering with propriety. John would never have done that. And these
reflections, all of which should have pleaded for John, ended in
weeping over the lost charms of Charlie.

One evening, just a week before the wedding, she roused herself from
some such sad meditations, and, duty-driven, sought John in the
smoking-room. The door was half open and she entered noiselessly. John
was sitting at the table; his arms were outspread on it, and his face
buried in his hands. Thinking he was asleep she approached on tiptoe
and leant over his shoulder. As she did so her eyes fell on a sheet of
note-paper; it was clutched in John's right hand, and the encircling
grasp covered it, save at the top. The top was visible, and Mary,
before she knew what she was doing, had read the embossed
heading--nothing else, just the embossed heading--Hotel de Luxe,
Cannes, Alpes Maritimes.

The drama teaches us how often a guilty mind rushes, on some trifling
cause, to self-revelation. Like a flash came the conviction that
Charlie had written to John, that her secret was known, and John's
heartbroken. In a moment she fell on her knees crying, "Oh, how wicked
I've been! Forgive me, do forgive me! Oh, John, can you forgive me?"

John was not asleep, he also was merely meditating; but if he had been
a very Rip Van Winkle this cry of agony would have roused him. He
started violently--as well he might--from his seat, looked at Mary, and
crumpled the letter into a shapeless ball.

"You didn't see?" he asked hoarsely.

"No, but I know. I mean I saw the heading, and knew it mu