.

"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?

The callous passage of the last post, after knocking cheerfully at
every door but his own, left him wondering and desperate.

Could he by any possibility have addressed his letter wrongly? It was
not easy to make a mistake in No. 1 Melgrave Square.

Could it have gone astray? The Post Office was abominably careless at
times. One was constantly hearing of letters slipping down behind
desks and monstrously delivered twenty years after date. What earthly
good would that letter be delive