“My aunt joins me in kindest regards.

“Yours very sincerely,
“Julia V. H. Anderson.”

“P.S.—­I think that I ought to return your letter.  I know that you would not object to my keeping it, but it does not seem right.  I wish to ask your congratulations.  I have been engaged for several years to Lieutenant Willing, of the Army.  He has been transferred from his post in Montana to Fort Hamilton at New York, and we are to be married in June.”

The next morning Mrs. Brinkley came up from breakfast in a sort of duplex excitement, which she tried to impart to her husband; he stood with his back toward the door, bending forward to the glass for a more accurate view of his face, from which he had scraped half the lather in shaving.

She had two cards in her hand:  “Miss Van Hook and Miss Anderson have gone.  They went this morning.  I found their P. P. C.’s by my plate.”

Mr. Brinkley made an inarticulate noise for comment, and assumed the contemptuous sneer which some men find convenient for shaving the lower lip.

“And guess who’s come, of all people in the world?”

“I don’t know,” said Brinkley, seizing his chance to speak.

“The Pasmers!—­Alice and her mother!  Isn’t it awful?”

Mr. Brinkley had entered upon a very difficult spot at the corner of his left jaw.  He finished it before he said, “I don’t see anything awful about it, so long as Pasmer hasn’t come too.”

“But Dan Mavering!  He’s in Washington, and he may come down here any day.  Just think how shocking that would be!”

“Isn’t that rather a theory?” asked Mr. Brinkley, finding such opportunities for conversation as he could.  “I dare say Mrs. Pasmer would be very glad to see him.”

“I’ve no doubt she would,” said Mrs. Brinkley.  But it’s the worst thing that could happen—­for him.  And I feel like writing him not to come—­telegraphing him.”

“You know how the man made a fortune in Chicago,” said her husband, drying his razor tenderly on a towel before beginning to strop it.  “I advise you to let the whole thing alone.  It doesn’t concern us in any way whatever.”

“Then,” said Mrs. Brinkley, “there ought to be a committee to take it in hand and warn him.”

“I dare say you could make one up among the ladies.  But don’t be the first to move in the matter.”

“I really believe,” said his wife, with her mind taken off the point by the attractiveness of a surmise which had just occurred to her, “that Mrs. Pasmer would be capable of following him down if she knew he was in Washington.”

“Yes, if she know.  But she probably doesn’t.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Brinkley disappointedly.  “I think the sudden departure of the Van Hooks must have had something to do with Dan Mavering.”

“Seems a very influential young man,” said her husband.  “He attracts and repels people right and left.  Did you speak to the Pasmers?”