“Clearly so,” I answered.  “Both her literary style and her liking for champagne abundantly demonstrate it!” His acute sense of humour did not enable him to detect the irony of my observation.  I doubt if it extended much beyond oyster shells.  He handed me the letter.  I read it through with equal amusement and gratification.  If Miss Sissie had written it on purpose in order to open Cecil Holsworthy’s eyes, she couldn’t have managed the matter better or more effectually.  It breathed ardent love, tempered by a determination to sell her charms in the best and highest matrimonial market.

“Now, I know this man, C.,” I said when I had finished.  And I want to ask whether you will let me show him Miss Montague’s letter.  It would set him against the girl, who, as a matter of fact, is wholly unwor—­I mean totally unfitted for him.”

“Let you show it to him?  Like a bird!  Why, Sissie promised me herself that if she couldn’t bring ‘that solemn ass, C.,’ up to the scratch by Christmas, she’d chuck him and marry me.  It’s here, in writing.”  And he handed me another gem of epistolary literature.

“You have no compunctions?” I asked again, after reading it.

Not a blessed compunction to my name.”

“Then neither have I,” I answered.

I felt they both deserved it.  Sissie was a minx, as Hilda rightly judged; while as for Nettlecraft—­well, if a public school and an English university leave a man a cad, a cad he will be, and there is nothing more to be said about it.

I went straight off with the letters to Cecil Holsworthy.  He read them through, half incredulously at first; he was too honest-natured himself to believe in the possibility of such double-dealing—­that one could have innocent eyes and golden hair and yet be a trickster.  He read them twice; then he compared them word for word with the simple affection and childlike tone of his own last letter received from the same lady.  Her versatility of style would have done honour to a practised literary craftsman.  At last he handed them back to me.  “Do you think,” he said, “on the evidence of these, I should be doing wrong in breaking with her?”

“Wrong in breaking with her!” I exclaimed.  “You would be doing wrong if you didn’t,—­wrong to yourself; wrong to your family; wrong, if I may venture to say so, to Daphne; wrong even in the long run to the girl herself; for she is not fitted for you, and she is fitted for Reggie Nettlecraft.  Now, do as I bid you.  Sit down at once and write her a letter from my dictation.”

He sat down and wrote, much relieved that I took the responsibility off his shoulders.

“Dear miss Montague,” I began, “the inclosed letters have come into my hands without my seeking it.  After reading them, I feel that I have absolutely no right to stand between you and the man of your real choice.  It would not be kind or wise of me to do so.  I release you at once, and consider myself released.  You may therefore regard our engagement as irrevocably cancelled.