Thus they parted, almost precipitately, and, for all of him, might never have met again in this world.  Half a mile up the road, it came to the young man that their farewell had lacked that final word of ceremony to which he now aspired.  To those who called at his office, to the men he met at the sign of the Mercury, even to Nicolovius when he betook himself from the lamp-lit sitting-room, it was his carefully attained habit to say:  “I hope to see you again soon.”  He meant the hope, with these, only in the most general and perfunctory sense.  Why, then, had he omitted this civil tag and postscript in his parting with Miss Weyland, to whom he could have said it—­yes, certainly—­with more than usual sincerity?  Certainly; he really did hope to see her again soon.  For she was an intelligent, sensible girl, and knew more about him than anybody in the world except Tim Queed.

Gradually it was borne in upon him that the reason he had failed to tell Miss Weyland that he hoped to see her again soon was exactly the fact that he did hope to see her again soon.  Off his guard for this reason, he had fallen into a serious lapse.  Looking with untrained eyes into the future, he saw no way in which a man who had failed to tell a lady that he hoped to see her again soon was ever to retrieve his error.  It was good-by, Charles Weyland, for sure.

However, Miss Weyland herself resolved all these perplexities by appearing at Mrs. Paynter’s supper-table before the month was out; and this exploit she repeated at least once, and maybe twice, during the swift winter that followed.

* * * * *

On January 14, or February 23, or it might have been March 2, Queed unexpectedly reentered the dining-room, toward eight o’clock, with the grave announcement that he had a piece of news.  Sharlee was alone in the room, concluding the post-prandial chores with the laying of the Turkey-red cloth.  She was in fickle vein this evening, as it chanced; and instead of respectfully inquiring the nature of his tidings, as was naturally and properly expected of her, she received the young man with a fire of breezy inconsequentialities which puzzled and annoyed him greatly.

She admitted, without pressure, that she had been hoping for his return; had in fact been dawdling over the duties of the dining-room on that very expectation.  From there her fancy grew.  Audaciously she urged his reluctant attention to the number of her comings to Mrs. Paynter’s in recent months.  With an exceedingly stagey counterfeit of a downcast eye, she hinted at gossip lately arising from public observation of these visits:  gossip, namely, to the effect that Miss Weyland’s ostensible suppings with her aunt were neither better nor worse than so many bold calls upon Mr. Queed.  Her lip quivered alarmingly over such a confession; undoubtedly she looked enormously abashed.

Mr. Queed, for his part, looked highly displeased and more than a shade uncomfortable.  He annihilated all such foolishness by a look and a phrase; observed, in a stately opening, that she would hardly trouble to deny empty rumor of this sort, since—­