Collins picked it up, opened it, and read its contents.
"Well?" he said, looking up with a sigh of relief. "If this is the note you wrote those Rushford girls, I must say I think you've done a mighty wise thing to get it back. It was a dangerous thing to have lying around. Have you had a quarrel?" and he grinned a little maliciously.
"Collins," said Vernon, coldly, "you have the poorest conception of good taste of any man I know, and I know some awful bounders. But I won't quarrel with you now, for you'll be grinning on the other side of that ugly mouth of yours anyway in about a minute. Will you kindly examine this piece of paper?" and he tore a leaf from his notebook.
"Be Bold, Be Bold"
Collins, biting his lips until they bled, took it and looked it over with frowning and puzzled countenance.
"Well?" he asked, at last.
"The note I sent the Misses Rushford," said Vernon, quietly, "was written on a leaf from the notebook, which I tore out just as I did that one you have in your hand," and he sat down and stared out the window, across the gray dunes and the gray sea to the gray horizon.
Collins, with compressed lips, held the two pieces of paper up to the light and compared their texture. Then he got out a small pocket magnifying glass and examined through it the writing on the note.
"It's a tracing," he said, at last, "and a mighty clever piece of work.
The paper, too, is very like."
"But it's not the same," put in Vernon.