She was a woman of sound practical sense, and had no intention of risking her happiness by falling a victim to her imagination.  She pressed the electric-button and wrote a letter to her former lover—­a friendly letter, without sentimental allusion, asking for news of him.  The sight of the handwriting that once had thrilled her, as well as the nature of his reply, would at least bring her to some sort of mental climax.  Moreover, he might be dead.  It might be spiritual influence that had handled her imagination.  She was not a superstitious woman; she was merely wise enough to know that she knew nothing, and that it was folly to disbelieve anything.

Hedworth did not return for three weeks.  During that time it seemed to her that her brain was an amphitheatre in which the two men were constantly wrestling.  She never saw one without the other.  When Hedworth mastered for the moment she was reminded that he was merely playing a familiar tune on her soul-keys.  She felt for the man who had first touched those keys a persistent tenderness, and during the last days watched restlessly for his letter.  But she felt no desire whatever to see him again.  For Hedworth she longed increasingly.

Hedworth returned.  The other man vanished.

* * * * *

She announced the engagement.  They had been invited to the same houses for the autumn.  Necessarily they saw little of each other, and planned to meet in the less-frequented rooms and in the woods.  At first they enjoyed this new experience; but when they found themselves in a large party that seemed to pervade every corner of the house and grounds at once, and two days had passed without an interview of five minutes’ duration, Hedworth walked up to her—­she was alone for the moment—­and said: 

“Four weeks from to-day we marry.”

She gave a little gasp, but made no protest.

“I have had enough of dawdling and sentimentalizing.  We will marry at your place in Sussex on the second of October.”

“Very well,” she said.

Shortly after she went to Paris to confer with the talent that should enhance her loveliness, then paid Mrs. Hedworth a visit in Switzerland.  Hedworth met her there, and his mother saw little of her guests.  Edith returned to England alone.  Hedworth was to follow at the end of the week, and spend the few remaining days of his bachelorhood at the house of a friend whose estate adjoined the one Lady Carnath had bought not long after her husband’s death.

Several days after her return she was sitting at her dressing-table when a letter was handed her bearing the Washington post-mark.  Her maid was devising a new coiffure, and she was grumbling at the result.  She glanced at the handwriting, pushed the letter aside, and commanded the maid to arrange her hair in the simple fashion that suited her best.  After the woman had fixed the last pin, Edith critically examined her profile in the triple mirror; then thrust out a thin little foot to be divested of its mule and shod in a slipper that had arrived that morning from Paris:  she expected people to tea.  While the maid was on her knees Edith bethought herself of the letter and read it:—­