“I thought it possible,” said Keswick, as soon as the two had fairly begun to smoke, “that you might not yet have left here, and so came over in the hope of seeing you.”

“Very kind,” said Lawrence.

Keswick smiled.  “I must admit,” said he, “that it was not solely for the pleasure of meeting you again that I came, although I am very glad to have an opportunity for renewing our acquaintance.  I came because I am quite convinced that Miss March wished very much to see you at the time arranged between you, and that she was annoyed and discomposed by your failure to keep your engagement.  Considering that you did not, and probably could not, know this, I deemed I would do you a service by informing you of the fact.”

“Did Miss March send you to tell me this?” exclaimed Lawrence.

“Miss March knows nothing whatever of my coming,” was the answer.

“Then I must say, sir,” exclaimed Lawrence, “that you have taken a great deal upon yourself.”

Keswick leaned forward, and after knocking off the ashes of his cigar on the outside of the railing, he replied in a tone quite unmoved by the reproach of his companion:  “It may appear so on the face of it, but, in fact I am actuated only by a desire to serve Miss March, for whom I would do any service that I thought she desired.  And, looking at it from your side, I am sure that I would be very much obliged to any one who would inform me, if I did not know it, that a lady greatly wished to see me.”

“Why does she want to see me?” asked Croft.  “What has she to say to me?”

“I do not know,” said Keswick.  “I only know that she was very much disappointed in not seeing you yesterday.”

“If that is the case, she might have written to me,” said Lawrence.

“I do not think you quite understand the situation,” observed his companion.  “Miss March is not a lady who would even intimate to a gentleman that she wished him to come to her when it was obvious that such was not his desire.  But it seemed to me that if the gentleman should become aware of the lady’s wishes through the medium of a third party, the matter would arrange itself without difficulty.”

“By the gentleman going to her, I suppose,” remarked Croft.

“Of course,” said Keswick.

“There is no ‘of course’ about it,” was Lawrence’s rather quick reply.

At that moment some letters were brought to him from a little post-office near by, to which he had ordered his mail to be forwarded.  As the address on one of these letters caught his eye, the somewhat stern expression on his face gave place to a smile, and begging his visitor to excuse him, he put his other letters into his pocket, and opened this one.  It was very short, and was from Mr Candy’s cashier.  It was written from Howlett’s, Virginia, a place unknown to him, and stated that the writer expected in a very short time to give him some accurate information