Yet even Mr. Stevenson could have found no cause for jealousy in the matter of the letters.  He might have objected to their being written at all, but beyond that they were innocuous.  For all the personality they contained they might have been transcripts of Jimmie’s reports to his firm.  He clung doggedly to his prescribed topics, and he could not have devised a surer method of arousing the curiosity and the interest of this spoiled young person.  She spent hours, which should have been devoted to the contemplation of approaching bliss, in reading between the prosaic lines, in searching for sentiment in a catalogue of railway stations, for tenderness in description of eccentric tables d’hote.  Finding no trace of his old gallantry in all the closely written pages, she attributed its absence to obedience and accepted it as the higher tribute to her power.  She was forced to judge her lover’s longing by the quantity rather than by the ardor of his words, and to detect the yearning of a true lover’s heart through such effectual disguise as: 

“Drewitt is a fine old chap; as placid and as bright as this country and a great deal more so than anyone you’ll see in the windows of the Union League Club.  He received me so cordially that I felt awkward about introducing the object of my visit, but when I had admired everything in sight from the mountains in the distance to the rug I was sitting on, I finally faced the situation and did it.

“‘Dear me,’ said he, ’are those directors still troubling themselves about their transaction with me?’ I admitted apologetically that they were; that their books refused to close over the gap left by the vanishing of $50,000, and that he was earnestly requested to return to New York and to lend his acknowledged business acumen, etc., etc.  He never turned a hair.  Said they—­and I—­were very kind.  Nothing could give him greater pleasure.  But the ladies preferred Japan.  Therefore he, etc., etc., etc.  But he would be delighted to explain the matter fully to me; to supply me with all the figures and information I desired. (And that, of course, is as much as I am expected to bring back.) But he would have to postpone his return until—­and you should have seen the whimsical, quizzical old eye of his—­until the nations would agree upon new extradition treaties.  Then, of course, etc., etc., etc.  Meanwhile, as there was no immediate urgency about the matter, as he hoped that I would stay with them for as long a time as I cared to arrange, he would suggest that we should join Mrs. Drewitt in the garden.  She would welcome news of our American friends.  ‘I need not ask you,’ he added as we went out through the wall-like people in a dream or a fairy tale, to be discreet and casual in your conversation with the ladies.  My daughter is away this week visiting an old friend of hers who is married to a missionary in a neighboring village.  She knows the reason for our being here.  My wife does not.  It need not be discussed with either of them.’  I should think not!