The two girls looked at each other.

"Goodness! I _have_ given it away!" cried Edna.

"More and more melancholy?" repeated Larcher. "Why, that must be Murray
Davenport. Was he the--? Then you must be the--! But surely _you_
wouldn't have given him up on account of the bad luck nonsense."

"Bad luck nonsense?" echoed Edna, while Miss Kenby looked bewildered.

"The silly idea of some foolish people, that he carried bad luck with
him," Larcher explained, addressing Florence. "He sent you a letter about
it."

"I never got any such letter from him," said Florence, in wonderment.

"Then you didn't know? And that had nothing to do with your giving him
up?"

"Indeed it had not! Why, if I'd known about that--But the letter you
speak of--when was it? I never had a letter from him after I left town.
He didn't even answer when I told him we were going."

"Because he never heard you were going. He got a letter after you had
gone, and then he wrote you about the bad luck nonsense. There must
have been some strange defect in your mail arrangements."

"I always thought some letters must have gone astray and miscarried
between us. I knew he couldn't be so negligent. I'd have taken pains to