's curiosity to the utmost. The fact is that this young
beauty, with all her inherent stability and strength of character, was
apt to be run away with by impish proclivities, that any good, serious
schoolgirl would have been ashamed of. This letter offered her a rare
opportunity for indulging them. Let it tell its own tale, even though we
begin on the fifth page.

"I must pause now to see what sort of a bed Lutwyche has managed to
arrange for me, and ring Maggie up if it isn't comfortable. Not but what
I am ready to rough it a little, rather than that the old lady should be
moved. She is the dearest old thing that ever was seen, with the
loveliest silver hair, and must have been surpassingly beautiful, I
should say. She keeps on reminding me of someone, and I can't tell who.
It may be Daphne Palliser's grandmother-in-law, or it may be old Madame
Edelweissenstein, who's a _chanoinesse_. But the nice old lady on the
farm I told you of keeps mixing herself up in it--and really all old
ladies are very much alike. By-the-by, I haven't explained her yet.
Don't be in such a hurry!... There now!--my bed's all right, and I
needn't fidget. Clo says so. The old lady is asleep with a stayed pulse,
says Dr. Dalrymple, who has just gone. And anything more beautiful than
that silver hair in the moonlight I never saw. Now I really must begin
at the beginning.

"Clo and I started on our pilgrimage to Sapps Court at half-past three,
without the barest suspicion of anything pending, least of all what I'm
going to tell. Go on. We left Mr. Percival Pellew on the doorstep,
pretending he was going to leave a book for Aunt Constance, and go away.
Such fun! He went upstairs and stopped two hours, and I do believe
they've got to some sort of decorous trothplight. Only A. C. when
accused, only says he has shown unmistakable evidence of something or
other, I forget what. Why on earth need people be such fools? There they
both _are_, and what more _can_ they want? She admits, however, that
there is 'no engagement'! When anybody says _that_, it means they've
been kissing. You ask Irene if it doesn't. Any female, I mean. Now go
on.

"A more secluded little corner of the world than Sapps Court I never
saw! Clo's barouche shot us out at the head of the street it turns out
of, and went to leave a letter at St. John's Wood and be back in half an
hour. We had no idea of a visitation, then. Besides, Clo had to be at
Down Street at half-past five. There