“Do you, by any chance, get all you want?” she inquired.
“Alas! no! Else I would have kept what I already had.”
She put her hands behind her, and faced around.
“Begin, sir!” she said. “Begin! and try to be serious.”
“Well,—once upon a time——” Then he 197 stopped. “I’ll go over to the house and get the letter—it will tell you much better than I can. You will wait here, right here, until I return?”
She looked at him, with a tantalizing smile.
“Won’t it be enough, if I am here when you return?” she asked.
When he came out on the piazza the rain had ceased, the clouds were gone, the temperature had fallen, and the stars were shining brightly in a winter sky.
He strode quickly down the walk to the street and crossed it diagonally to his own gates. As he passed under the light, which hung near the entrance, a man walked from the shadow of the Clarendon grounds and accosted him.
“Mr. Croyden, I believe?” he said.