"Your loving cousin,

"MURIEL USSHER."

Riatt laughed as he laid it down. "I bet she doesn't stay long," he said.
"How she does skim the cream!" And then with an exclamation of surprise
he tore open another envelope which had been left by hand. It said:

"Dear Max:

"I hope you will be pleasantly surprised to find that Mother and I are
staying in this hotel. I find New York more wonderful but more unfriendly
than I had been told, and I want terribly to see a familiar face. Won't
you look us up as soon as you can?

"Yours as ever,

"DOROTHY."

He went to the telephone, found that she was in and immediately arranged
that she should go out to lunch with him.

All the morning and some of the night, he had been engaged in the
composition of a letter to Dorothy Lane. Theirs was an old and
sentimental friendship, which adverse circumstances might have ended, or
favoring circumstances have changed into love. As things were, it seemed
to be tending toward their marriage without any whirlwind rapidity.

There was no doubt he was very glad to see her, as he hurried her into a