“Answer one more question.  By whom is the letter signed?”

“There is no signature, Madam.  It was found in the house where the two young men lived.  Our people searched the house from top to bottom surreptitiously, and they think the writer was arrested before he had finished the letter.  There is no address, and nothing to show for whom it is intended, except the phrase beginning, ‘My dearest Dorothy.’”

The girl leaned back in her chair, and drew a long breath.  “It is not for me,” she said, hastily; then bending forward, she cried suddenly: 

“I agree to your terms:  give it to me.”

The man hesitated, fumbling in his inside pocket.

“I was to get your promise in writing,” he demurred.

“Give it to me, give it to me,” she demanded.  “I do not break my word.”

He handed her the letter.

“My dearest Dorothy,” she read, in writing well known to her.  “You may judge my exalted state of mind when you see that I dare venture on such a beginning.  I have been worrying myself and other people all to no purpose.  I have received a letter from Jack this morning, and so suspicious had I grown that for a few moments I suspected the writing was but an imitation of his.  He is a very impulsive fellow, and can think of only one thing at a time, which accounts for his success in the line of invention.  He was telegraphed to that his sister was ill, and left at once to see her.  I had allowed my mind to become so twisted by my fears for his safety that, as I tell you, I suspected the letter to be counterfeit at first.  I telegraphed to his estate, and received a prompt reply saying that his sister was much better, and that he was already on his way back, and would reach me at eleven to-night.  So that’s what happens when a grown man gets a fit of nerves.  I drew the most gloomy conclusions from the fact that I had been refused admission to the Foreign Office and the Admiralty.  Yesterday that was all explained away.  The business is at last concluded, and I was shown copies of the letters which have been forwarded to my own chiefs at home.  Nothing could be more satisfactory.  To-morrow Jack and I will be off to England together.

“My dearest Dorothy (second time of asking), I am not a rich man, but then, in spite of your little fortune of Bar Harbor, you are not a rich woman, so we stand on an equality in that, even though you are so much my superior in everything else.  I have five hundred pounds a year, which is something less than two thousand five hundred dollars, left me by my father.  This is independent of my profession.  I am very certain I will succeed in the Navy now that the Russian Government has sent those letters, so, the moment I was assured of that, I determined to write and ask you to be my wife.  Will you forgive my impatience, and pander to it by cabling to me at the Bluewater Club, Pall Mall, the word ‘Yes’ or the word ‘Undecided’?  I shall not allow you the privilege of cabling ‘No.’  And please give me a chance of pleading my case in person, if you use the longer word.  Ah, I hear Jack’s step on the stair.  Very stealthily he is coming, to surprise me, but I’ll surprise—­”