all we go down?"

"What for? It is not time for dinner. Oh, Martin told me there was a
messenger waiting to deliver a letter, just now, as I came here."

The color flared up over Flavia's delicate face.

"A messenger, Isabel?"

"Yes, who would not send up his message. I told Martin that we would
ring."

Flavia slowly wound the chain around her throat. There was no escape
from Isabel's insistent companionship, she realized.

"Ring, then, please," she requested, and passed into her little
sitting-room, beyond.

Isabel followed curiously, ensconcing herself in one of the easy-chairs
and idly twitching blossoms from the hyacinths in a bowl near her. All
day she had been especially nervous and irritable, her least movements
were characterized by an impatience almost feverish.

The messenger who appeared on the threshold was Jack Rupert, not in the
familiar guise of the Mercury's mechanician, but Rupert at leisure; a
small, immaculate figure as New Yorkese as Broadway itself. The movement
that brought Flavia across to him was impulsive as a confident child's
and accompanied by a candid radiance of glance and smile flashed
straight into the visitor's black eyes. She had no attention to spare to
the fact that Isabel also had risen.

"You have been so good as to bring a message to me, Mr. Rupert?" she
questioned happily.

"I ain't denying it was a pleasure to come," he made gracious reply,
with his slight drawl of speech. "I've been given this to deliver to
Miss Rose, from Mr. Gerard, under orders to bring the answer back unless
it was preferred to send it by Mr. Rose, junior, to-morrow."

"This" was a letter. As Flavia held out her hand to receive it, Isabel
reached her side and seized her wrist so fiercely as to bruise the soft
flesh.

"It is mine!" she panted. "Give it to me--it is mine!"

Flavia stood still, looking at the other girl with slow-gathering,
incredulous resentment and wonder.

"Yours? You expected this from Mr. Gerard, Isabel?"

"I--no--yes--Corrie warned me he would," Isabel stammered. "You shall
not read it, Flavia Rose, you shall not! It is for me, for me--no one
must see it."

She was trembling in a vehement excitement half-hysteric. Very quietly
Flavia disengaged her arm from the grasp holding it; for the moment
Isabel's touch was loathsome to her.

"For whom is the letter, my cousin or me?" she asked the bearer.

"I guess there ain't any answer; I don't know," avowed Rupert, troubled