“Dear Miss Brandt,—­When I called at Lady Elspeth Gordon’s this afternoon, I learned, to my very great regret, in which I dare to hope you may participate, that our dear old friend had been summoned to Inverstrife at almost a moment’s notice, by the sudden illness of her niece, the Countess of Assynt.

“I trust her visit may not need to be a very extended one, but Lady Elspeth is such a tower of strength to all who seek her help that she is not likely to return so long as she can be of any possible assistance to her friends.

“For reasons which, perhaps, I need not particularise, her sudden departure is to me a loss beyond its apparent magnitude.  The hours I have spent at her house have been among the brightest of my life.  You also have enjoyed her friendship.  I venture to hope that you also will miss her.

    “Should I not have the pleasure of seeing you for some little
    time, I would beg of you to bear me in your kindly
    remembrance.—­Sincerely yours,

    “John C. Graeme.”

Did it say too much?  Would she look upon it as an overstepping of the limits their acquaintance had reached?

Did it say enough?  Could she possibly overlook the things he would so dearly have liked to say but had left unsaid?

Did it say too little?  Could she possibly deem it an unnecessary liberty, and cold at that?  He did not think she could by any possibility look at it in that light.

But after it was at last surely lodged in the pillar-box, all these doubts came back upon him with tenfold force, and his sleep that night would have been short-commons for a nightingale.

She would get his letter by the first post in the morning.  Would she answer it at once?  Or would she wait half a day considering it?

Either course held hopeful possibilities.  A prompt answer would surely suggest a concurrence of feeling.  An answer delayed would without doubt mean that she was pondering his words and reading between the lines.  So he possessed his soul in patience, of a somewhat attenuated texture, and waited in hope.

But the whole day passed, and the night, and the next morning’s post still brought him nothing,—­nothing but an intimation from a publisher of excellent standing that he would not decline to look over the manuscript of his next book if he was open to an offer.  And this important document he tossed on one side as lightly as if it were a begging letter or a tailor’s advertisement.

What were any other letters, or all the letters in the world, to him when the one letter he desired was not there?

All that bright April day he waited indoors, in order to get Margaret’s letter the moment it arrived.  For how should he wander abroad, in gloomy-blazing streets or desolate-teeming parks with that anxiously-expected letter possibly awaiting him at home?