"DEAR MR ESCOTT,--I have not seen anything of you for a very long
time; you promised to lunch with me before you left town, but I
suppose amid the general gaieties and friends of the season you were
carried far away quite out of my reckoning. However, I hope when you
return you will come and see me. I got your address from Mr. ---, but
you need not tell him that I wrote to you; he is, as you know, a
dreadful chatterbox, and somehow or other, without meaning it,
contrives to make gossip and mischief out of everything.

"The weather here is delicious--perhaps a trifle too hot; and
sometimes I envy you your cool sea-side resort. I wonder what the
attraction is? It must be a very special one to keep you out of London
in June.

"Should you be in town next Thursday, come and dine; I have a box for
the theatre. And as an extra inducement I will tell you that I have
two very nice girls staying with me, who will interest you.--Yours
very truly, HELEN SEVELEY."

Some men of thirty would have instantly understood Lady Seveley's
letter. But age gives us nothing we do not already possess, the years
develop what is latent in us in youth, and it is certain that Frank at
thirty would have understood the letter as vaguely and incompletely as
he did to-day. We read our sympathies and antipathies in all we look
upon, and Frank read in this letter an old woman with diamonds and
dyed hair. He had met her twice. The first time was at a ball where he
knew nobody; the second was at a dinner party. She had fixed her eyes
upon him; she had prevented him from talking after dinner to a young
girl whom he had admired across the table during dinner. He did not
like her, and he thought now of the young girls he would meet if he