scarcely hearing his parting injunction that she should take a
copy of her letter.

That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been
impossible, if at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed
into her box. He was just back from Rome, where he had dined
with the Hickses ("a bang-up show--they're really lances-you
wouldn't know them!"), and had met there Lansing, whom he
reported as intending to marry Coral "as soon as things were
settled". "You were dead right, weren't you, Susy," he
snickered, "that night in Venice last summer, when we all
thought you were joking about their engagement? Pity now you
chucked our surprise visit to the Hickses, and sent Streff up to
drag us back just as we were breaking in! You remember?"

He flung off the "Streff" airily, in the old way, but with a
tentative side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning
toward Susy, said coldly: "Was Breckenridge speaking about me?
I didn't catch what he said. Does he speak indistinctly--or am
I getting deaf, I wonder?"

After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had
dropped her at her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed
off the date and her address, and then stopped; but suddenly she
remembered Breckenridge's snicker, and the words rushed from
her. "Nick dear, it was July when you left Venice, and I have
had no word from you since the note in which you said you had
gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.

"You haven't written yet, and it is five months since you left