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 tie laugh that was half a sob. “How could I be when I ’m engaged—to some one else?”

That most sedately correct person, Mr. Jonathan Morley, several times poked his head inside the door to announce that lunch was ready and each time discreetly withdrew it. His lordship had gone down town to attend a mid-day banquet in his honor given by the Chamber of Commerce, and M-. Morley did not feel at all at his ease with respect to what he observed in the drawing-room of his master. More especially, however, his conscience began to smite him for having arranged for the abstraction of the letters of the pair inside who, he observed, were quite oblivious of his existence,—of everything, in fact, except each other. The luncheon grew cold,—colder,—stone cold. At the end of an hour Mr. Morley regretfully ordered its removal, and retired to his lordship’s bed-chamber to lay out the evening clothes of his master.

In the embrasure of the window these two babes in the wood sat in much the same posture that they had occupied in the grove behind the gamekeeper’s on that memorable afternoon three years before.