sends you her love, in which I beg to join." So the letter was
expressed, and so it ended.

"They needn't be afraid of my troubling them. Calm seas and
pleasure-boats! Stuff and nonsense!" Such was the first impression
which his wife's report of herself produced on Old Ronald's mind. After
a while, he looked at the letter again--and frowned, and reflected.
"Please let me hear of your visit beforehand," he repeated to himself,
as if the request had been, in some incomprehensible way, offensive to
him. He opened the drawer of his desk, and threw the letter into it.
When business was over for the day, he went to his club at the tavern,
and made himself unusually disagreeable to everybody.

A week passed. In the interval he wrote briefly to his wife. "I'm all
right, and the shop goes on as usual." He also forwarded one or two
letters which came for Mrs. Ronald. No more news reached him from
Ramsgate. "I suppose they're enjoying themselves," he reflected. "The
house looks queer without them; I'll go to the club."

He stayed later than usual, and drank more than usual, that night. It
was nearly one in the morning when he let himself in with his
latch-key, and went upstairs to bed.

Approaching the toilette-table, he found a letter lying on it,
addressed to "Mr. Ronald--private." It was not in his wife's
handwriting; not in any handwriting known to him. The characters sloped
the wrong way, and the envelope bore no postmark. He eyed it over and
over suspiciously. At last he opened it, and read these lines:

"You are advised by a true friend to lose no time in looking after your