Wilfrid pressed her fingers.  “Can you ever believe that, I have called you a ’simmering pot of Emerald broth’?”

“My dear! annything that’s lots o’ words, Ye may call me,” returned Mrs. Chump, “as long as it’s no name.  Ye won’t call me a name, will ye?  Lots o’ words—­it’s onnly as if ye peppered me, and I sneeze, and that’s all; but a name sticks to yer back like a bit o’ pinned paper.  Don’t call me a name,” and she wriggled pathetically.

“Yes,” said Wilfrid, “I shall call you Pole.”

“Oh! ye sweetest of young fellas!”

Mrs. Chump threw out her arms.  She was on the point of kissing him, but he fenced with the open letter; and learning that she might read it, she gave a cry of joy.

“Dear W.!” she begins; and it’s twice dear from a lady of title.  She’s just a multiplication-table for annything she says and touches.  “Dear W.!” and the shorter time a single you the better.  I’ll have my joke, Mr. Wilfrud.  “Dear W.!” Bless her heart now!  I seem to like her next best to the Queen already.—­“I have another plan.”  Ye’d better keep to the old; but it’s two paths, I suppose, to one point.—­“Another plan.  Come to me at the Dolphin, where I am alone.”  Oh, Lord!  ‘Alone,’ with a line under it, Mr. Wilfrud!  But there—­the arr’stocracy needn’t matter a bit.”

“It’s a very singular proceeding not the less,” said Wilfrid.  “Why didn’t she go to the hotel where the others are, if she wouldn’t come here?”

“But the arr’stocracy, Mr. Wilfrud!  And alone—­alone! d’ye see? which couldn’t be among the others; becas of sweet whisperin’.  ‘Alone,’” Mrs. Chump read on; “’and to-morrow I’ll pay my respects to what you call your simmering pot of Emerald broth.’  Oh ye hussy!  I’d say, if ye weren’t a borrn lady.  And signs ut all, ‘Your faithful Charlotte.’  Mr. Wilfrud, I’d give five pounds for this letter if I didn’t know ye wouldn’t part with it under fifty.  And ‘deed I am a simmerin’ pot; for she’ll be a relation, my dear!  Go to ’r.  I’ll have your bed ready for ye here at the end of an hour; and to-morrrow perhaps, if Lady Charlotte can spare me, I’ll condescend to see Ad’la.”

Wilfrid fanned her cheek with the note, and then dropped it on her neck and left the room.  He was soon hurrying on his way to the Dolphin:  midway he stopped.  “There may be a bad shot in Bella’s letter,” he thought.  Shop-lights were ahead:  a very luminous chemist sent a green ray into the darkness.  Wilfrid fixed himself under it.  “Confoundedly appropriate for a man reading that his wife has run away from him!” he muttered, and hard quickly plunged into matter quite as absorbing.  When he had finished it he shivered.  Thus it ran: 

“My beloved brother,

“I bring myself to plain words.  Happy those who can trifle with human language!  Papa has at last taken us into his confidence.  He has not spoken distinctly; he did us the credit to see that it was not necessary.  If in our abyss of grief we loss delicacy, what is left?—­what!