e hysterical yelp and fell upon Langham, paw and
muzzle.

When their affection had been temporarily satiated, the dog lay down on
the bed, eyes riveted on his late master, and the man went over to his
desk, drew a sheet of club paper towards him, found a pen, and wrote:

"Of course it is an unhappy coincidence, and I will go when I can do so
decently--to-morrow morning. Meanwhile I shall be away all day fishing
the West Branch, and shall return too late to dine at the club table.

"I wish you a happy sojourn here--"

This he reread and scratched out.

"I am glad you kept His Highness."

This he also scratched out.

After a while he signed his name to the note, sealed it, and stepped
into the hallway.

At the farther end of the passage the door of her room was ajar; a
sunlit-scarlet curtain hung inside.

"Come here!" said Langham to the dog.

His Highness came with a single leap.

"Take it to ... her," said the man, under his breath. Then he turned
sharply, picked up rod and creel, and descended the stairs.

Meanwhile His Highness entered his mistress's chamber, with a polite
scratch as a "by your leave!" and trotted up to her, holding out the
note in his pink mouth.

She looked at the dog in astonishment. Then the handwriting on the
envelope caught her eye.

As she did not offer to touch the missive, His Highness presently sat
down and crowded up against her knees. Then he laid the letter in her
lap.

Her expression became inscrutable as she picked up the letter; while she
was reading it there was color in her cheeks; after she had read it
there was less.

"I see no necessity," she said to His Highness--"I see no necessity for
his going. I think I ought to tell him so.... He overestimates the
importance of a matter which does not concern him.... He is sublimely
self-conscious, ... a typical man. And if he presumes to believe that
the hazard of our encounter is of the slightest moment ... to me ..."

The dog dropped his head in her lap.

"I wish you wouldn't do that!" she said, almost sharply, but there was a
dry catch in her throat when she spoke, and she laid one fair hand on
the head of His Highness.

A few moments later she went down-stairs to the great hall, where she
found Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent just finishing their morning
cocktails.

When they could at last comprehend that she never began her breakfast
with a cocktail, they conducted her solemnly to the breakfast-room,
seated h