QUEEN OF A DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3212, 6 October 1915, Page 68

QUEEN OF A DAY.

THE NOVELIST. [FonusiißD by Special Arrangement.}

Br STELLA M. DURING, Author of “Love’s Privilege,” “The End of the Rainbow,” “Faery Gold,” “Deringham’s Daughter,” “In Search of Herself,” “Malicious Fortune,” “Seedtime and Harvest,” etc., etc. (Copyright.) SYNOPSIS OP PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTERS I—II. —Dick Dyson is accorded a very affectionate welcome on his return from Oxford to Marpledon Priory by his uncle. Sir Mortimer Dyson, and his cousin, Coral, whom Sir Mortimer wishes Dick to marry. Later, Dick quarrels with his uncle on political matters, and the sequel is that ho is disinherited, and also asked to leave the house, until he can come round to his uncle’s views. Dick determines to live the life of the lower middle-class, and with this object in view goes to London and gets a position on the staff of the Harbinger, a socialistic paper, at £2 a week. He then goes in search of cheap lodgings, and finds them at 47 Coryston road, presided over by a Mrs Pounds. While at lunch in a restaurant the same day, Dyson is struck by the beauty of a young lady, who sits at his table. By some misfortune she loses part of the money to pay for her dinner, and Dyson otters to lend it her. She refuses, and he feels slightly rebuffed. The same night at dinner in Coryston road, he is introduced to his fellow lodgers, who make frequent allusions to “Elsie.” Dick is greatly surprised when the door opens, and a girl sits down at the table whom lie recognises as the young lady who had lost her money that morning. CHAPTERS lll—lV.—Dyson soon finds out that Elsie Denham is the life and soul of the lodgers at Coryston road, and wonders greatly at it. At the end of the first week he realises he is in love with her. Later, on one of their frequent Sunday excursions, in answer to a question of his she says she has not yet found the man whom she sufficiently cares to marry. Dyson, whilst feeling chilled, does not altogether lose hope. CHAPTERS V—Vl.—Aline Ferber is seated jn a spacious room of the “Maison Augusta," waiting whilst her mother chooses a gown, when she notices a young shop employee who is very beautiful. Later, this young lady, who is Elsie Denham, is ordered to take some parcels down to Lady Ferber’s motor car. She gets into conversation with the chauffeur, who is really Lady Ferber’s son, Brooke, and this results in his inviting her and Mrs founds for a drive the following Saturday

afternoon. On tho return from this drive he promises to get her a ticket for Aline Ferber s birthday party. CHAPTER VII. must speak to him—really I must.” “ Yes, mother,” returned Aline a little wearily; “you say that every time, but you never do.” For to-day Lady Ferber and her daughter were the occupants of the handsome ' •*' ' new car in which Elsie had ridden with such ecstatic enjoyment the Saturday before. They had been for a drive, but not out of London, all Lady Ferber’s interests circling about what she called “ taown,” and the same brown-eyed, pleasant-faced young man had driven them. And not at all to Lady Ferber s satisfaction. Her plump hands were fastened in an agonised clutch, the- one on the cushions, the other on Aline’s arm, as the car slid and swerved and hooted its way through the London traffic. “ This is awful,” she murmured when at last she dared to take her attention from the painful wending of her homeward way. “ I really must speak to him.” “ Yes, mother,” said Aline, and sighed ; “so you said before.” But this time Lady Ferber did. The chauffeur, with an insouciance somewhat unusual in chauffeurs, followed the two ladies he had just driven home up into the drawing room. He had left his cap and coat downstairs; but he still wore his gaiters, and his boots, as he stood in the middle of the rug, were hardly likely to improve its silken whiteness. Lady Ferber deposited her plump person on the nearest lounge and looked at him with an odd mixture of adoration and disapproval. “ That’s the last time, Brooke —the very last time,” she told him with decision. “ Yon may enjoy risking life and limb in the London streets; but I don’t. The nrx- time I go out I go with Graves. Really, this morning has been ” “The very limit,” finished Brcoke laughing. “You were all right, mother — really you were. Yon don’t think I’d risk an accident with you and Aline in the car, do you ? Graves! I’m a better driver than Graves by a long chalk. And the car’s a beaut'-.” “So it ought to be —the price you have f—Vr-n f nr HI” Wm-ned '’’s mother ta’-tlv, and got up and went out. Aline sighed. Thi; was what Ladv Ferber called “talking ”to Brooke! Brooke glanced at his sistev. “Was the frightened?” he asked. “ Yes. And to was I, and I’m no coward. It’s too bad of you, Brooke. You know it is.” “Bah! You were all right. I hate nervous women. When I take a girl out again it’ll be one who isn’t afraid.” And his thoughts flew suddenly to one with a fair, piquant little face and eyes bright with courage. “ And now about this partv. Fortnight off, isn’t it?” “Ten days.” “Frocks all right?” “Yes—at least, I suppose so. Mine will be. I’m not so sure about mother’s.” “Not sure! Why do you let her choose things you’re not sure about?” “ Let her! I wish you had been with me on Friday. I was glad when she chose anything! ” “ Poor Sis,” returned Brooke laughing. “ And now about the cards. How r many can I have, Lina?” “ Six. I’m relying on you to get me at least six dancing men from somewhere.” Brooke nodded reassuringly. “Bring you down a round dozen if you want ’em,” he said, “ provided, of course, yon can put them up. We couldn’t get back to Oxford that night, not if we’re to be any good to you. You can sleep them? How many—six? Eight? All right. Eight. And what about the girls?” “No girls.” Aline’s face twdsted up Into acute distaste." “ There are heaps of girls already. Nice ones. I don’t like your women friends, Brooke. You know I don’t. They’re not my style at all.” Brooke’s face changed a little. “I want a card for one,” he said. “ You’re going to let me have this one, Sis. I won’t bring you a man if you don’t.” His sister glanced at him half-curiously. Every trace of the flippant levity that generally disfigured his face died out of it. He looked grave, serious, almost earnest for once. “Who is she?” she asked. “ Miss Kathleen Glenconner. She lives in a little village not far from Oxford. I got to know her by accident. I can’t tell you now : It’s a long story. But I want a card for her. I want you to see her.” Aline leant forward, her hands hanging lightly over her knees, and studied him. There had been a note in his voice as he said “Miss Kathleen Glenconner” that no woman ever mistakes. “ Is she someone particular?” she asked. “Yes,” in curt return. “Very particular?” No answer. “Is she—just a friend—or something more ?” He laughed, half shamefacedly. “Well, to be honest, she’s something more.” Aline studied him with wide, dark eyes. His manner was new, his face, his voice, his glance, the very lift of his head were different. “Brooke,” she said softly, “are you—in earnest—this time?” “To the bottom of my soul.” Aline dropped back In her chair and drew a long hard breath. It was what she had watched, hoped, prayed for, that Brooke should at last be m earnest about something, but that he should be in earnest about a girl whose name was Kathleen Glenconner meant trouble. “You know, of course, that it will disappoint father,” she said at last. Brooke nodded. No one knew better than he. “But perhaps,” more hopefully, “there are circumstances that might help to reconcile him. Is she a lady?”

“Emphatically, yes." “Of position? Has she friends? I mean the sort of friends that would commend her to father?” “Good Lord, no. Never was there a lonelier little girl. She lives with her grandfather, a dried-up old bookworm, whose universe consists of parchment and printer’s ink. I don’t think she has a relative in the world, and she never sees a soul but the two old fossils who work for them, “Has she any money?’’ “Not a cent.” Aline sighed again. “It don’t matter, I can marry anyone I choose, but we have always known that your choice would have to be one dad could approve. Y r ou see ” She broke off, loyalty to the mother thev both loved constraining her. Brooke nodded. Why say it when all the words in the world could not make clearer to him the fact that it was the smart of his own mistaken marriage which rendered Sir Charles so difficult to please with regard to his son’s. “You’ve got to help me, Lina,” he said presently. “I’m counting on it. No one else can.” Rut Aline drew- back with decision. “I must see her first.” “So you shall. I want you to see her. That’s why I am asking for the card.” “You’re bringing her to my party?” “Yes.” He spoke with certainty. Why mention difficulties which were so sure to be overcome ? “You mean to introduce her to father?” “Yes.” “As your future wife?” He hesitated a painful moment. “Not at first. Not until he is convinced of the desirability of letting me marry as I choose —and not as he chooses for me.” “But,” she objected, the colour rising a little in her sallow face, “you are a man, turned twenty-two. If you want to marry the girl, marry her. Why shouldn’t you !” “And get mv allowance stopped?” Aline’s mouth curled. “You can’t expect to have everything,” she said quietly. “Risk your allowance — and if you lose" it, work for her as a man should.” “Work !” he returned with a blank face. “Good Lord ! What could I do?” “And—do you call that love?” “I call it commonsense, anyway,” he retorted. Aline put her hands behind her head and studied her brother. The world well lost for a woman! No; that was not Brooke’s way. He would want the woman and the world, too, the world as he knew it, of money and motors and mansions, of ease and elegance apart altogether from endeavour. Work! Was he likely to work even for the girl who had touched him, or so he said, to the bottom of his soul. Tire very suggestion rankled. “Work!” he burst our presently, “why should I, with a governor as rich as mine? It’s preposterous. It’s beyond all thinking.” “Well,” returned Aline calmly, “I only want to caution you. Father would like to see you work ; I believe he would jump at any excuse to compel you. He says it’s the only chance for you, and I’m not sure I don’t agree with him. If you cross him, especially in this matter of your marriage——” But Brooke heard nothing but one phrase. “Agree with him. Speak out, Lina Which side are you taking? His or mine?” “I don’t know til! I have seen her.” “Give me that card, then.” She rose, went over to her writing table, filled it in. and handed it to him, large, square, gold-edged, crest-embossed, setting forth in delicate print that Miss Aline Ferber reonested the pleasure of Miss Kathleen Glenconner’s company on Wednesday, April 30, at 9 p.m. He read it all, from the tiny “Music” at one side to the tiny “Dancing” at the other. Then he .looked across at his sister. She was a queer girl, he told himself, bitten by every feminine folly going, but she was a “good sort” sometimes. Was she going to be a good sort now ? She met his anxious eyes steadily. If he were in earnest, really in earnest, even though work formed no part of his programme “Brooke, bring her,’ she said. “If I like her, if she is really nice, if she is a good girl ” He caught her shoulders and his eyes warmed—she could almost haye thought they dimmed. “Good old sis,” he said heartily, “I thought I might count upon you. It isn’t the first time you’ve stood by me, is it? She is the best girl in all the world, Lina, and as for liking her—wait till you see her.” “I’ll help you —I’ll help you with all my heart if I do,” said Aline softly. “I suppose she—she really is the only one now, Brooke?” He hesitated just the tiniest fraction of a second, for the fact, the annoying and unwelcome fact, that he had promised another girl that she should see something, were it only a. glimpse, of his sister’s party flashed across his mind. But that, of course, was a play promise, meaning nothing. He had never intended to keep it. If Kathleen were to be with him that evening it would be quit© impossible to keep it, as he had known even when he made it. It was a thing of gossamer, spun of a moment’s merriment,' to shine an instant in the sunshine of a girl’s glance. It vexed him that he should even remember its existence. “She is the only one, sis,” he said gravely. “There will never be another now, never as long as I live.” And in a long, long room under a London roof not a bowshot away, a room whose windows looked out over acres of chimneypots standing stiffly in a sea of smoke, a girl’s heart sang as her silkladen needle flashed in and out of the embroidery upon her frame. “Only ten days,” she told herself, her sweet eyes catching the gleam of the cross above the great dome of St. Paul’s, rising

like an island from the haze, “Only ten days—and I shall see him again!” CHAPTER VIII. “Grandad, I’m tired.” “Are you. dear?” Gregory Glenconner pushed his spectacles up on to his dusty skull-cap and stared at his companion with a surprise he could not hide. Never in all the long years they had spent together in industrious companionship had he known Kathleen say she was tired before. It was as though the patient horse, plodding with drooping head and weary feet round and round and round with the wheel, had suddenly looked into the face of the man with the whip, and protested at its endless labour. Yet it would not have surprised anyone else that the girl should be tired. The room was close and hot. Every window was closed though the April sunshine glittered on the dusty panes. For six mortal hours she had bent over her writing pad, taking down, in a neat shorthand of her own evolving, the busy workings of the old man’s mind. Only once had the task stopped, that she might have time to drink a little milk and eat a biscuit. The old man himself had had nothing. The needs of the human machine irritated him; he attended to its wants only when the threatened collapse of inanition forced him. And after the simple meal the work had gone on again, for to-day was a good day when his brain was on fire with thoughts and the words in which to clothe them came rapidly, gone on until now, when the afternoon sun poured warm and golden even through the cobwebs and dirt on the coloured west window, and the very flics that had buzzed all day in its beams had gone to sleep in corners. It was not surprising, he grudgingly conceded, that Kathleen should be tired. What was surprising was that she should say so. “Are you not well, child?” “Yes,'thank you. grandpa, I’m quite well.” “Then, why. my dear, waste ” He broke off blankly amazed. Even the gentle remonstrance that had never before failed to whip up flagging energies and send her with renewed zeal back to her task failed to-day. There was even a touch of impatience, unendurable impatience, in tire movement of her thin shoulder. “I have a headache, grandpa, dear. I want to get out into the air.” “Then, perhaps, my dear ” She waited for no more. Old Gregory Glenconner stared after her. She had not stayed to lock up her pad and pencils; she' had not even nut her chair aside. The child must be ill. But if so her appetite was not yet affected. In the pantry she cut herself a thick slice of white bread and spread it thickly with honey, though she knew Marie would miss both when she came down stairs, and with that in one hand and a glass of milk in the other ran lightly down a long stone passage and out into the sun. “I thought I should never get away, never, never, never!” she said with the little sobbing thrill in her voice that tells of a strain almost too grievous to be borne. It was a ruinous, old garden that she hurried through. Grass never cut, white now with da’sies, stretching away to distant shrubberies. Roses, never pruned, flung thorny branches right across the path. Flowers pushed up here and there in what had once been beds; chocked with weeds, neglected, slowly dying, still they struggled to lift smiling faces to the sun. The house she had left was even more ruinous than the garden. The lower windows at this side were boarded up, a good many of the upper ones were broken. Kathleen had no fear that anyone would see her run, for A.chille was digging in the vegetable garden, where all was order, luxuriance, and prosperity. Marie was as’eep in the attic under the roof, \nd her grandfather never left his study untff exhaustion drove him to his bed. Dodging the tossing rose-branches, pushing through 'wet and tangled grass, she reached a little gate. Its hasp was gone, its hinges broken and tied with string, Achille had no time for work that profited nothing; but Kathleen handled the intricacies of the bit of wire that fastened it with deft fingers—it was not the first time. On the other side a sunny meadow, daisy-starred, sloped downwards to a brook, and over the brook leant an old old willow, its trunk hollow and rotted into touchwood, its head, a bower of silvery green, flourishing no one quite knew how. Primroses grew on the bank about its feet, lavender lady-smocks, bordering the brook, ran away on either side like a pale silken ribbon. The robin whom nest was under the primrose leaves crouched close to its speckled eggs at her footsteps, but its bright eyes lost thenfear at sight of her. The little vole crept out of its burrow in the bank expectant of the crumbs with which she was wont to feed him. , But to-day the girl saw none of these things, saw nothing but the white road running by, over the bridge, through the straggling, shabby village, up the hill beyond. “It’s the middle of April,” she told herself. “He said he would be back by the middle of April.” She could see it plainly, that white road running by, and no one could see her hidden in the leafy crown of the old tree. A long, long while she watched it, empty and desolate for her in" spite of the shouting children running home from school, the be-medalled stallion, tip-toeing in conscious pride beside its leader, the lumbering, bumping farm carts. But suddenly she stood upright in the tree, sjazed a moment, and with one spring reached the ground. He was there. She watched him, breathless, as he pushed his bicycle through the hedge, flung it upon the safer side, and ran down the daisied slope. Like some fair saint she looked, her dress of faded bine, a simple sack with sleeves in it, falling softly about her, her hands clasping tightly above her beating heart, her plaintively curved lips a little open, her eyes on fire.

Even Brooke caught a hint of it as he ran. ■‘You darling,” he said, holding her away from him that he might see her the better. ‘‘lf only you had a halo behind your head and a few golden stars on your gown!” And then, for the girl, all the universe swung to the rapture of his kisses.

They climbed into the old tree together and sat, their arms about one another, hidden from all the world behind its quivering veil of new silver leaves. A hundred thousand questions he asked her, of her health, of her life, of her work, and she answered them with a pellucid simplicity, baring her very soul before him. It was such a lovely soul, so brave, so pure, so confident in the goodness of the wmrld but that its beauty should have revealed itself to Brooke was odd._ The attraction this girl had for him, this girl who had no clothes except the shapeless sacks Marie made for her, whose infrequent shoes were the clumsy efforts of the village cobbler, who had never been a railway journey, to whom the people of the great world were a race as hazy and unreal as the inhabitants of the astral plane are to us, yet whose Greek was better than his own, was a surprise even to himself. She was not at all the sort of girl, he had reflected more than once, he had ever expected to love. Yet he did love her, almost enough to make sacrifices for her sake. But it was more his svmpathy, Ins tenderness, his chivalry she had touched, than his admiration. The life she led, narrow, poverty stricken, heavily laborious, a life starved of affection, of joy, moved him to a passion of pity. The very sight of her as she sat among the silver leaves, her soft, pale hair loosely held by its blue ribbon falling straight and heavy with a sweep like falling water over her shoulders, her slim, pale hands clasped round her knee, her eyes raised to his in absolute trust and adoration, brought that swift dimness across his sight again. How lovely she looked—and how good! An old half forgotten phrase, something about the beauty of holiness, rose achingly in his mind.’ And then a certain air of fragility, almost delicacy about her struck him forcibly. The girl was thin to attenuation. He took hold of one arm in its skimp blue sleeve, and his face lengthened all out in its dismay. She was not a girl, she was a wraith, a spirit-maiden, just sufficiently veiled in flesh to be visible. “Kathleen,” he said, ‘‘he’s been overworking you again.” “No,” shaking her head and laughing a little. “We have never worked thirteen, hours running since the day he fainted, the day I rushed out—and found } r ou. You remember?” He lifted a strand of her hair, soft, heavy, and sweet, and kissed it. Remember! Would he ever forget the little flying figure in blue, white-faced, and too afraid for tears, who had flung herself in his path as he cycled gaily back to Oxford in the October dusk after a twenty miles’ spin, and implored him for the love of God to help her. Marie had gone to the market town three miles away to sell her superfluous butter and bring back some simple stores. Achille was working she knew not where —and her grandfather was dying. He had found him lying on the study floor, collapsed and helpless, after thirteen hours’ continuous mental work, had picked him up, the old man’s frail spareness meaning nothing to his young strength, and revived him with whisky from his pocket flask ; had cycled off for a doctor, and come back to find him recovered and grateful, so grateful that he had even consented to the young man’s calling the next day to ask how he was. Brooke had called at intervals a good many times since then, and the old man, at the young one’s deference for his erudition, had welcomed him and taken an interest in him and the great University of which he was a humble and unworthy son. Grandfather!—who ’never before had welcomed anyone. Grandfather, who had been old so long that he had forgotten what it was to be young, and never even dreamt that a slim maiden with a saint’s face could be more attractive than his own scholarship. Remember! Would he ever forget! But the Kathleen he had seen first on that day had not quite the ethereal, unsubstantial look of the Kathleen he saw to-day. “They don’t look after you properly,” he said uneasily. “Tell me, sweetheart, what do they feed you on in that ” “That tnmble-down old barrack over there.” had been on his tongue, but he kept it there. The “tumble-down old barrack” was Kathleen’s home, the only home she had ever known. “The usual things,” she returned, smiling. “Yes, but what are the usual things? Beef and beer—or daisies and dewdrops ” “Oh, not beef!” in shocked disclaimer. “We never have meat. We can’t afford it.” “Then what do you have?” “Oh, eggs and milk and fruit and vegetables, and all the things Achille can grow for us. We never buy anything, except a little flour and oatmeal and corn for the chickens.” “And tea and sugar and things like that? Achille can’t grow them, you know.” “We never use sugar; we always have honey instead. And we never have tea or coffee; we can’t afford it.” Brooke looked away from her, frowning and disturbed, for the artless revelation of this extreme frugality made his afternoon’s errand seem almost ridiculous. For this afternoon he had an errand. In London, among people to whom the spending of money is a matter of course, and the taking of an occasional pleasure a necessary part of existence, his plan had seemed reasonable, sensible quite certain to be accepted. But here, faced as he was now with a life in which money as a factor had been practically eliminated, where Marie’s every purchase of flour and oatmeal and corn for the chickens depended upon her ability to sell her superfluous eggs and apples and butter first, it struck him as preposterous, unthinkj

able. But he might at least mention it. If lie approached it tentatively, experimentally, what would she say ? “Kathleen,” he began, “I want you and my sister to meet. How am I to manage it?” The girl flushed brightly. He had hinted at his wish once or twice before, but this was the first time he had clothed it in definite words. “You must bring her here,” she said His face darkened, and the hand still holding the too slender arm in its blue sleeve jerked. Bring her here —where an old man and an old house moulder slowly away together, and only the exertions of two stolid, industrious, not too scrupulously honest Belgian servants stood between the tiny household and utter -want. Marie kept the great kitchen and the few rooms in daily use scrupulously clean, that was a matter of tradition and training. But the entrance hall was hung with the cobwebs of years, the steps leading to the doors were black and moss-grown —to wash them would have been a superfluity of cleanliness, since not once in many months did anyone ascend them. Brooke had a swift mental picture of Aline on them, pulling the rustv bell handle, gravely regarding the cobwehhung hall and carpetless staircase facing the dusty disorder of old Gregory Glenconner’s study. Bring _ her here! He laughed the 'curt, unmirthful laugh of utter confusion and dismay. “Barling, I’ve a better way than that to take you to her,” he said. “May I, Kathleen? Shall I?” And Kathleen laid her two slim hands above her quicklybeating heart and whispered : “How?” in rapturous inquiry. Then and there he plunged into the details of his plan. Kathleen listened aghast. To persuade her grandfather to break the seclusion of five-and-forty years and go to London ! To stay in an hotel. To buy for Kathleen a dress in which she might go to a dance! Kathleen, who had never had a dress but those which Marie made for her, who had never seen anyone dance in her life. “But that would cost money!” she said at last. “Well?” Brooke’s tone was sharply impatient. “And we haven’t anv.” “No, but I have! Oh, darling, couldn’t you just for once spend some of my money. Think what it would mean, sweetheart, to get mv sister on our side. Surely, surely you will let me do this little thing' that means so much for us both.” Kathleen drew a long, long breath. Could thev not, should they not, let him do this little, little thing that might mean so much to both! “I would.” she said rapturously, for she had never even heard of the hideous convention that a maiden must not accept money from'a man lest he expect a base return, “but grandfather won’t. Persuade him to leave home, to take a iourney, to go to London! It would be ouite. quite impossible. You know how he talks to me. ‘Shun the world, Kathleen, trust no one, love no one. Here, alone among our books, we are peaceful, serene, and unafraid’. Leave your hiding-place and you will suffer. The world is full of evil, child. Shun it—and be content. We have food and raiment and shelter and books. What more do we want?’ Oh, Brooke, as if I could he content with that!’ Brooke caught her to him. What a destiny for this wide eyed, eager girl. “And you,” he said. “Surely if I undertook to place you in safety, if I pledged myself to bring you back hanpy and unharmed ! Surely he would let you have this little pleasure.” “I dare not even ask him. ’ with gentle finality. “It would destroy his confidence in you. It might prevent us, perhaps, from ever seeing one another again.” “And would von be prevented?”

She hesitated a painful moment. “I could not disobev grandfather now that he is so old,” she said piteously. ‘I should have to do as he wanted me. I don’t think I could bear it. I love you so dearly. I feel things so deeply, I should suffer so dreadfullv that I don’t think I could bear it. But I would not grieve and disappoint grandfather, I would obey him— if it killed me.” Brooke looked at her almost shocked. The flame of her ardent emotional temperament seemed to blaze and glow through its frail earthly shell. Vaguely he realised that he must risk no conflict between such a soul and such a body. So he must gb'e up all idea of this visit to London. He must arrange a meeting between his sister and his love in some other way. With that irrelevancy to which in moments of mental confusion thoughts are prone, his flew whimsically to the card he had coaxed from Aline. It would be of no use now. and it seemed a pity that what had been obtained with some difflcultv should he wasted. Need it be wasted, after all? What about that other girl who had so passionately desired e glimpse, a brief and passing glimpse, of lives different from her own? Even w ; th Kathleen’s, head upon his shoulder. Kathleen’s hair falling straight, heavy, and scented over his arm. he thought of that other girl—and laughed. Should be, after all, redeem his promise? Should he send that useless card —to her? (To be continued.)