ngbourne's letter. The reply
began with an apology for the delay, and Langbourne perceived that he
had gained rather than lost by the writer's hesitation; clearly she
believed that she had put herself in the wrong, and that she owed him a
certain reparation. For the rest, her letter was discreetly confined to
an acknowledgment of the trouble he had taken.

But this spare return was richly enough for Langbourne; it would have
sufficed, if there had been nothing in the letter, that the handwriting
proved Miss Simpson to have been the one who had made the entry of her
name and her friend's in the hotel register. This was most important as
one step in corroboration of the fact that he had rightly divined her;
that the rest should come true was almost a logical necessity. Still, he
was puzzled to contrive a pretext for writing again, and he remained
without one for a fortnight. Then, in passing a seedsman's store which
he used to pass every day without thinking, he one day suddenly
perceived his opportunity. He went in and got a number of the catalogues
and other advertisements, and addressed them then and there, in a
wrapper the seedsman gave him, to Miss Barbara F. Simpson, Upper Ashton
Falls, N. H.

Now the response came with a promptness which at least testified of the
lingering compunction of Miss Simpson. She asked if she were right in
supposing the seedsman's catalogues and folders had come to her from
Langbourne, and begged to know from him whether the seedsman in question
was reliable: it was so difficult to get garden seeds that one could
trust.

The correspondence now established itself, and with one excuse or
another it prospered throughout the winter. Langbourne was not only
willing, he was most eager, to give her proof of his reliability; he
spoke of stationers in Springfield and Greenfield to whom he was
personally known; and he secretly hoped she would satisfy herself
through friends in those places that he was an upright and trustworthy
person.

Miss Simpson wrote delightful letters, with that whimsical quality which
had enchanted him in her voice. The coaxing and caressing was not there,
and could not be expected to impart itself, unless in those refuges of
deep feeling supposed to lurk between the lines. But he hoped to provoke
it from these in time, and his own letters grew the more earnest the
more ironical hers became. He wrote to her about a book he was reading,
and when she said she had not seen