“I told you about a letter I had had from poor Patty, and I want to ask you to do something.  Will you write to her?  Just a nice, friendly little letter.  She would be so delighted, she would indeed.  There’s no harm in copying a line or two from what she sent me.  ’Has Mr. Hilliard forgotten all about me?’ she says.  ’I would write to him, but I feel afraid.  Not afraid of you, dear Eve, but he might feel I was impertinent.  What do you think?  We had such delicious times together, he and you and I, and I really don’t want him to forget me altogether?’ Now I have told her that there is no fear whatever of your forgetting her, and that we often speak of her.  I begin to think that I have been unjust to Patty in calling her silly, and making fun of her.  She was anything but foolish in breaking off with that absurd Mr. Dally, and I can see now that she will never give a thought to him again.  What I fear is that the poor girl will never find any one good enough for her.  The men she meets are very vulgar, and vulgar Patty is not—­as you once said to me, you remember.  So, if you can spare a minute, write her a few lines, to show that you still think of her.  Her address is——­, etc.”

To Hilliard all this seemed merely a pleasant proof of Eve’s amiability, of her freedom from that acrid monopolism which characterises the ignoble female in her love relations.  Straightway he did as he was requested, and penned to Miss Ringrose a chatty epistle, with which she could not but be satisfied.  A day or two brought him an answer.  Patty’s handwriting lacked distinction, and in the matter of orthography she was not beyond reproach, but her letter chirped with a prettily expressed gratitude.  “I am living with my aunt, and am likely to for a long time.  And I get on very well at my new shop, which I have no wish to leave.”  This was her only allusion to the shattered matrimonial project:  “I wish there was any chance of you and Eve coming to live in London, but I suppose that’s too good to hope for.  We don’t get many things as we wish them in this world.  And yet I oughtn’t to say that either, for if it hadn’t been for you I should never have seen Paris, which was so awfully jolly!  But you’ll be coming for a holiday, won’t you?  I should so like just to see you, if ever you do.  It isn’t like it was at the old shop.  There’s a great deal of business done here, and very little time to talk to anyone in the shop.  But many girls have worse things to put up with than I have, and I won’t make you think I’m a grumbler.”

The whole of January went by before Hilliard and Eve again saw each other.  The lover wrote at length that he could bear it no longer, that he was coming to Dudley, if only for the mere sight of Eve’s face; she must meet him in the waiting-room at the railway station.  She answered by return of post, “I will come over next Sunday, and be with you at twelve o’clock, but I must leave very early, as I am afraid to be out after nightfall.”  And this engagement was kept.