had settled on her young friends. While
exhorting to patience she was full of hope, and dismissed as chimerical
all the darker explanations which the disconsolate lovers invented to
account for the silence their communications had met with. Under her
influence the breakfast-table became positively cheerful, and at last
all the three burst into a hearty laugh at one of the old lady's little
jokes.

At this moment Arthur Laing entered the room. His brow was clouded. He
had searched his purse, his cigar-case, the lining of his hat--in fact
every depository where a careful man would be likely to bestow
documents whose existence he wished to remember; as no careful man
would put such things in the pocket of his 'blazer', he had not
searched there; thus the telegrams had not appeared, and the culprit
was looking forward, with some alarm, to the reception which would
await him when he 'turned up' to lunch with his friends, as he had
promised to do. Hardly, however, had he sat down to his coffee when his
sombre thoughts were cleared away by the extraordinary spectacle of
young Mr. and Mrs. Ashforth hobnobbing with their maid, the latter lady
appearing quite at home and leading the gayety and the conversation.
Laing laid down his roll and his knife and looked at them in
undisguised amazement.

For a moment doubt of his cherished theory began to assail his mind.
He heard the old lady call Ashforth "John;" that was a little strange,
and it was rather strange that John answered by saying: "That must be
as you wish; I am entirely at your disposal." And yet, reflected Laing,
was it very strange, after all? In his own family they had an old
retainer who called all the children, whatever their age, by their
Christian names, and was admitted to a degree of intimacy hardly
distinguishable from that accorded to a relative.

Laing, weighing the evidence pro and contra, decided that there was an
overwhelming balance in favor of his old view, and dismissed the matter
with the comment that, if it ever befell him to go on a wedding-tour,
he would ask his wife to take a maid with rather less claims on her
kindness and his toleration.

That same morning the second pair of telegrams, forwarded by post from
Cannes, duly arrived. Dora and Charlie, reading them in the light of
their recent happy information, found them most kind and comforting,
although in reality they, apart from their missing forerunners, told
the recipients nothing at all. J