“I nearly began ‘My beloved,’” he said solemnly.

Somehow she had expected it to be this.  “Why didn’t you?” she asked, a little disappointed.

“I like the other so much better,” he replied.  “To write it was so delicious to me, I thought you would not mind.”

“I don’t mind,” she said hastily. (What could it be?)

“But you would have preferred ’beloved’?”

“It is such a sweet name.”

“Surely not so sweet as the other, Grizel?”

“No,” she said, “no.” (Oh, what could it be!)

“Have you destroyed it?” he asked, and the question was a shock to her.  Her hand rose instinctively to defend something that lay near her heart.

“I could not,” she whispered.

“Do you mean you wanted to?” he asked dolefully.

“I thought you wanted it,” she murmured.

“I!” he cried, aghast, and she was joyous again.

“Can’t you guess where it is?” she said.

He understood.  “Grizel!  You carry my letter there!”

She was full of glee; but she puzzled him presently.

“Do you think I could go now?” she inquired eagerly.

“And leave me?”

It was dreadful of her, but she nodded.

“I want to go home.”

“Is it not home, Grizel, when you are with me?”

“I want to go away from home, then.”  She said it as if she loved to tantalize him.

“But why?”

“I won’t tell you.”  She was looking wistfully at the door.  “I have something to do.”

“It can wait.”

“It has waited too long.”  He might have heard an assenting rustle from beneath her bodice.

“Do let me go,” she said coaxingly, as if he held her.

“I can’t understand——­” he began, and broke off.  She was facing him demurely but exultantly, challenging him, he could see, to read her now.  “Just when I am flattering myself that I know everything about you, Grizel,” he said, with a long face, “I suddenly wonder whether I know anything.”

She would have liked to clap her hands.  “You must remember that we have changed places,” she told him.  “It is I who understand you now.”

“And I am devoutly glad,” he made answer, with humble thankfulness.  “And I must ask you, Grizel, why you want to run away from me.”

“But you think you know,” she retorted smartly.  “You think I want to read my letter again!”

Her cleverness staggered him.  “But I am right, am I not, Grizel?”

“No,” she said triumphantly, “you are quite wrong.  Oh, if you knew how wrong you are!” And having thus again unhorsed him, she made her excuses to Ailie and slipped away.  Dr. Gemmell, who was present and had been watching her narrowly, misread the flush on her face and her restless desire to be gone.

“Is there anything between those two, do you think?” Mrs. McLean had said in a twitter to him while Tommy and Grizel were talking, and he had answered No almost sharply.