little plan. Decidedly I did not anticipate the interview with unmixed pleasure; but, as I have said, I felt bound to inform her that her former lover’s death was a fiction. My suit might be doomed thereby to failure, — I had no right to expect otherwise, — but if it should succeed and I had kept silence on this point, I should have played the part of a — well, of a man “of three letters.”

“Mademoiselle is not at home,” said the servant.

“Not at home! But I am dining with her, my friend.”

“Mademoiselle has been called away suddenly, and she has left a note for monsieur. Will monsieur give himself the trouble to come into the salon?”

The note ran thus: