“Dear Mr. Bevan,

“I hope you won’t think me very rude, running off without waiting to say good-bye.  I had to.  I saw Percy driving up in a cab, and knew that he must have followed us.  He did not see me, so I got away all right.  I managed splendidly about the money, for I remembered that I was wearing a nice brooch, and stopped on the way to the station to pawn it.

    “Thank you ever so much again for all your wonderful
    kindness.

       Yours,
       the girl in the cab.”

George read the note twice on the way down to the breakfast room, and three times more during the meal; then, having committed its contents to memory down to the last comma, he gave himself up to glowing thoughts.

What a girl!  He had never in his life before met a woman who could write a letter without a postscript, and this was but the smallest of her unusual gifts.  The resource of her, to think of pawning that brooch!  The sweetness of her to bother to send him a note!  More than ever before was he convinced that he had met his ideal, and more than ever before was he determined that a triviality like being unaware of her name and address should not keep him from her.  It was not as if he had no clue to go upon.  He knew that she lived two hours from London and started home from Waterloo.  It narrowed the thing down absurdly.  There were only about three counties in which she could possibly live; and a man must be a poor fellow who is incapable of searching through a few small counties for the girl he loves.  Especially a man with luck like his.

Luck is a goddess not to be coerced and forcibly wooed by those who seek her favours.  From such masterful spirits she turns away.  But it happens sometimes that, if we put our hand in hers with the humble trust of a little child, she will have pity on us, and not fail us in our hour of need.  On George, hopefully watching for something to turn up, she smiled almost immediately.

It was George’s practice, when he lunched alone, to relieve the tedium of the meal with the assistance of reading matter in the shape of one or more of the evening papers.  Today, sitting down to a solitary repast at the Piccadilly grill-room, he had brought with him an early edition of the Evening News.  And one of the first items which met his eye was the following, embodied in a column on one of the inner pages devoted to humorous comments in prose and verse on the happenings of the day.  This particular happening the writer had apparently considered worthy of being dignified by rhyme.  It was headed: 

    “The peer and the policeman.”

      “Outside the ‘Carlton,’ ’tis averred, these stirring
    happenings occurred.  The hour, ’tis said (and no one
    doubts) was half-past two, or thereabouts.  The day was
    fair, the sky was blue, and