"Your letter was rather enigmatical, and I do not know whether I
understood it exactly. I suppose you told me what you did for good
reasons of your own, and I did not think much about it. I believe the
question of taste did not come up in my mind.

"My aunt joins me in kindest regards.

"Yours very sincerely,

"JULIA V. H. ANDERSON.

"P.S.--I think that I ought to return your letter. I know that you would
not object to my keeping it, but it does not seem right. I wish to
ask your congratulations. I have been engaged for several years to
Lieutenant Willing, of the Army. He has been transferred from his post
in Montana to Fort Hamilton at New York, and we are to be married in
June."

The next morning Mrs. Brinkley came up from breakfast in a sort of
duplex excitement, which she tried to impart to her husband; he stood
with his back toward the door, bending forward to the glass for a more
accurate view of his face, from which he had scraped half the lather in
shaving.

She had two cards in her hand: "Miss Van Hook and Miss Anderson have
gone. They went this morning. I found their P. P. C.'s by my plate."

Mr. Brinkley made an inarticulate noise for comment, and assumed the
contemptuous sneer which some men find convenient for shaving the lower
lip.

"And guess who's come, of all people in the world?"

"I don't know," said Brinkley, seizing his chance to speak.

"The Pasmers!--Alice and her mother! Isn't it awful?"

Mr. Brinkley had entered upon a very difficult spot at the corner of
his left jaw. He finished it before he said, "I don't see anything awful
about it, so long as Pasmer hasn't come too."

"But Dan Mavering! He's in Washington, and he may come down here any
day. Just think how shocking that would be!"

"Isn't that rather a theory?" asked Mr. Brinkley, finding such
opportunities for conversation as he could. "I dare say Mrs. Pasmer
would be very glad to see him."

"I've no doubt she would," said Mrs. Brinkley. "But it's the worst
thing that could happen--for him. And I feel like writing him not to
come--telegraphing him."

"You know how the man made a fortune in Chicago," said her husband,
drying his razor tenderly on a towel before beginning to strop it. "I
advise you to let the whole thing alone. It doesn't concern us in any
way whatever."

"Then," said Mrs. Brinkley, "there ought to be a committee to take it in
hand and warn him."

"I dare say you could make one up among the ladies.