Reader, when you are an editor, with a continent’s explosions to describe, you will understand how one may be unconscious of the passage of time.

I walked home, sad at heart.  There was no light in all Mr. Wentworth’s house; there was none in any of Mrs. Pollexfen’s windows;[H] and the last carriage of her last relation had left her door.  I stumbled up stairs in the dark, and threw myself on my bed.  What should I say, what could I say, to Julia?  Thus pondering, I fell asleep.

If I were writing a novel, I should say that, at a late hour the next day, I listlessly drew aside the azure curtains of my couch, and languidly rang a silver bell which stood on my dressing-table, and received from a page dressed in an Oriental costume the notes and letters which had been left for me since morning, and the newspapers of the day.

I am not writing a novel.

The next morning, about ten o’clock, I arose and went down to breakfast.  As I sat at the littered table which every one else had left, dreading to attack my cold coffee and toast, I caught sight of the morning papers, and received some little consolation from them.  There was the Argus with its three columns and a half of “Important from South America,” while none of the other papers had a square of any intelligibility excepting what they had copied from the Argus the day before.  I felt a grim smile creeping over my face as I observed this signal triumph of our paper, and ventured to take a sip of the black broth as I glanced down my own article to see if there were any glaring misprints in it.  Before I took the second sip, however, a loud peal at the door-bell announced a stranger, and, immediately after, a note was brought in for me which I knew was in Julia’s hand-writing.

“DEAR GEORGE:—­Don’t be angry; it was not my fault, really it was not.  Grandfather came home just as I was leaving last night, and was so angry, and said I should not go to the party, and I had to sit with him all the evening.  Do write to me or let me see you; do something—­”

What a load that note took off my mind!  And yet, what must the poor girl have suffered!  Could the old man suspect?  Singleton was true to me as steel, I knew.  He could not have whispered,—­nor Barry; out that Jane, Barry’s wife.  O woman! woman! what newsmongers they are!  Here were Julia and I, made miserable for life, perhaps, merely that Jane Barry might have a good story to tell.  What right had Barry to a wife?  Not four years out of college, and hardly settled in his parish.  To think that I had been fool enough to trust even him with the particulars of my all-important secret!  But here I was again interrupted, coffee-cup still full, toast still untasted, by another missive.

    “Tuesday morning.

    “SIR:—­I wish to see you this morning.  Will you call upon me, or
    appoint a time and place where I may meet you?

    “Yours, JEDEDIAH WENTWORTH.”