Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/71

Rh "Our happiness?" Rose was all interest.

"Why, the end of our delays."

She smiled with every allowance. "Do you mean we're to go out and be married this minute?"

"Well—almost; as soon as I've read you a letter." He produced, with the words, his pocketbook.

She watched him an instant turn over its contents. "What letter?"

"The best one I ever got. What have I done with it?" On his feet before her, he continued his search.

"From your people?"

"From my people. It met me in town, and it makes everything possible."

She waited while he fumbled in his pockets; with her hands clasped in her lap she sat looking up at him. "Then it's certainly a thing for me to hear."

"But what the dickens have I done with it?" Staring at her, embarrassed, he clapped his hands, on coat and waistcoat, to other receptacles; at the end of a moment of which he had become aware of the proximity of the noiseless butler, upright in the