ference. Ever shallow, hasty, and
positive, he went home quite cock-a-hoop.

He was not a man that kept secrets well. When elate on a subject, he
could not avoid talking about it. The next morning, having occasion to
employ his son's tutor as his secretary, he must needs announce to him,
in mouthing accents, and with much flimsy pomp of manner, that he had
better hold himself prepared for a return to the south at an early day,
as the important business which had detained him (Mr. Sympson) so long
in Yorkshire was now on the eve of fortunate completion. His anxious and
laborious efforts were likely, at last, to be crowned with the happiest
success. A truly eligible addition was about to be made to the family
connections.

"In Sir Philip Nunnely?" Louis Moore conjectured.

Whereupon Mr. Sympson treated himself simultaneously to a pinch of snuff
and a chuckling laugh, checked only by a sudden choke of dignity, and an
order to the tutor to proceed with business.

For a day or two Mr. Sympson continued as bland as oil, but also he
seemed to sit on pins, and his gait, when he walked, emulated that of a
hen treading a hot girdle. He was for ever looking out of the window and
listening for chariot-wheels. Bluebeard's wife--Sisera's mother--were
nothing to him. He waited when the matter should be opened in form, when
himself should be consulted, when lawyers should be summoned, when
settlement discussions and all the delicious worldly fuss should
pompously begin.

At last there came a letter. He himself handed it to Miss Keeldar out of
the bag. He knew the handwriting; he knew the crest on the seal. He did
not see it opened and read, for Shirley took it to her own room; nor did
he see it answered, for she wrote her reply shut up, and was very long
about it--the best part of a day. He questioned her whether it was
answered; she responded, "Yes."

Again he waited--waited in silence, absolutely not daring to speak, kept
mute by something in Shirley's face--a very awful something--inscrutable
to him as the writing on the wall to Belshazzar. He was moved more than
once to call Daniel, in the person of Louis Moore, and to ask an
interpretation; but his dignity forbade the familiarity. Daniel himself,
perhaps, had his own private difficulties connected with that baffling
bit of translation; he looked like a student for whom grammars are blank
and dictionaries dumb.

* * * * *

Mr. Sympson had be