"I hope, however, that I may still have the pleasure of meeting you occasionally elsewhere. When one has not the habit of readily making new friendships one clings the more firmly to those already made.—Sincerely yours,
"JOHN C. GRAEME."
That letter he dropped into the Pixley letterbox himself that night, and so was assured of its delivery. But two days passed in waning hope, and the afternoon of the third found him on the doorstep of No. 1 Melgrave Square.
II
"Miss Brandt?"
The solemn-faced man-servant eyed him suspiciously as a stranger. He looked, to Graeme, like a superannuated official of the Court of Chancery.
"Miss Brandt is not at home, sir."
"Mrs. Pixley?"
"Mrs. Pixley is not at home, sir."
Was he right or wrong, he wondered, in thinking he detected a gleam of satisfied anticipation, of gratified understanding, in the solemn one's otherwise rigid eye—as of one who had been told to expect this and was lugubriously contented that it had duly come to pass?