ELIZABETH DI MIRAMARE.

Jim was, as usual, hovering between Courtenaye Coombe and Courtenaye
Abbey. There were hours between us, even by telegraph, and the best I
expected was an answer in the afternoon to my morning's message. But at
six o'clock his name was announced, and he walked into the drawing room
of my flat as large as life, or a size or two larger.

"Good gracious!" I gasped. "You've _come_?"

"You're not surprised, are you?" he retorted.

"Why, yes," I said. "I didn't suppose----"

"Then you're not so brainy as I thought you were," said he. "Also you
didn't look at time-tables. What awful catastrophe has happened to you,
Elizabeth, to make you want to see me?"

I couldn't help laughing, although I didn't feel in the least like
laughter; and besides, he had no right to call me Elizabeth.

"Nothing has happened to _me_," I explained. "It's to somebody else----"

"Oh, somebody you've been trying to 'brighten,' I suppose?"

"Yes, and failed," I confessed.

He scowled.

"A man?"

"A man and his girl." Whereupon I emptied the whole story into the bowl
of Jim's intelligence.

"Do you see light?" I asked at last.

"No," he returned, stolidly. "I don't."

Oh, how disappointed I was! I'd hardly known how much I'd counted on Jim
till I got that answer.

"But I might find some," he added, when he'd watched the effect of his
words on me.

"How?" I implored.

"There's only one way, if any, to get the kind of light you want," said
Jim. "It might be a difficult way, and it might be a long one."

"Yet you think light _could_ be got? The kind of light I want?" I
clasped my hands and deliberately tried to look irresistible.

"Who can tell? The one thing certain is, that trying would take all my
time away from everything else, maybe for weeks, maybe for months."

His tone made my face feel the way faces look in those awful concave
mirrors: about three feet in length and three inches in width.

"Then you won't undertake the task?" I quavered.

"I don't say that," grudged Jim.

"You _wouldn't_ say it if you could meet Joyce Arnold," I coaxed. "She's
such a darling girl. Poor child, she's out now, pulling strings for a
job in India."

"Meeting her wouldn't make any difference to me," said Jim. "It's for
you I'd try to bring off this stunt--if I tried at all."

"Oh, then do it for me," I broke out.

"That's what I was working up to," he replied. "I wouldn't say 'yes' and
I wouldn't say 'no' till I