“He is coming up first thing to-morrow to tell you all about it; and, unless I’m mistaken, to speak to you about Honor.”
“What about her?” sharply.
“Why, you dear, stupid man, are you asleep still? Can’t you guess?”
“You told me that there was nothing of that sort; in fact,” with an angry laugh, “that ‘the boy,’ as you called him, was desperately devoted to you.”
“What stuff!” she ejaculated indignantly. “He will have thirty thousand a year! I know that I shall never close an eye to-night!”
“And are good-naturedly resolved that I am to keep you in countenance. You might, I think, have reserved this double-barrelled forty-pounder for the morning.”
“And that’s all the thanks I get,” she grumbled, as she slowly trailed away to her dressing-room.
Just about this very time, Mark Jervis was smoking a cigarette in his bare sitting-room. Before him, on the table, lay a white feather fan and a programme. He was much too happy to go to bed, he wanted to sit up and think. His thoughts were the usual bright ones incident to love’s young dream, and as he watched the smoke slowly curling up the air was full of castles. These beautiful buildings were somewhat rudely shattered by the entrance of his bearer—wrapped in a resai, and looking extremely sleepy—with a letter in his hand.
“A Pahari brought this for the sahib three hours ago,” tendering a remarkably soiled, maltreated envelope.
Of course it was from his father at last. He tore it open, and this was what it said—