Peter.

    Dear miss Pierce: 

A letter from Watts this morning tells me of his good fortune.  Fearing lest my blindness may perhaps still give you pain, I write to say that your happiness is the most earnest wish of my life, and nothing which increases it can be other than good news to me.  If I can ever serve you in any way, you will be doing me a great favor by telling me how.

    Please give my regards to Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, and believe me,

    Yours ever sincerely,

    Peter stirling.

After these letters were written, Peter studied the wall again for a time.  Studied it till long after the hour when he should have lunched.  The wall had three cracks in it which approximated to an outline of Italy, but though Peter gazed at this particular wall a good many hours in the next few weeks, he did not discover this interesting fact till long after this time of wall-gazing.

In the early morning and after dinner, in spite of the summer heat, he took long walks.  During the day he sat in his office doing nothing, with the exception of an occasional letter to his mother, and one or two to Watts in respect to the coming wedding.  Two visits to the tailor’s, and another to Tiffany’s, which resulted in a pearl pin rather out of proportion to his purse, were almost the sole variations of this routine.  It was really a relief to this terrible inactivity, when he found himself actually at the Shrubberies, the afternoon before the wedding.

Peter was rather surprised at the ease with which he went through the next twenty-four hours.  It is true that the house was too full, and each person too busy, to trouble the silent groomsman with attention, so he might have done pretty much what he wished, without being noticed.  He arrived late, thus having no chance for greetings till after a hurried dressing for dinner, when they were made in the presence of the whole party, who had waited his coming to go to the meal.  He went through the ordeal well, even that with Miss Pierce, actually showing less embarrassment than she did.  What was more astonishing, he calmly offered his arm to the bridesmaid who fell to his lot, and, after seating her, chatted without thinking that he was talking.  Indeed, he hardly heeded what he did say, but spoke mechanically, as a kind of refuge from thought and feeling.

“I didn’t find him a bit so,” the girl said to Miss Pierce, later in the evening, with an indefiniteness which, if not merely feminine, must presuppose a previous conversation.  “He isn’t exactly talkative, but he is perfectly easy to get on with.  I tried him on New York, and found he had gone into a good many odd places and can tell about them.  He describes things very well, so that one sees them.”

“It must be your tact, then, Miss Leroy,” said Mrs. Pierce, “for we could get nothing out of him before.”