Dear Sir.—­I am sorry that I am unable to comply with your request.  I prefer the invitation to call at your private residence should come from Mrs. Ryder.

Yours, etc.,

Shirley green.

She laughed as she showed this to Stott:  “He’ll write me again,” she said, “and next time his wife will sign the letter.”

An hour later she left Massapequa for the city.

CHAPTER XI

The Hon. Fitzroy Bagley had every reason to feel satisfied with himself.  His affaire de coeur with the Senator’s daughter was progressing more smoothly than ever, and nothing now seemed likely to interfere with his carefully prepared plans to capture an American heiress.  The interview with Kate Roberts in the library, so awkwardly disturbed by Jefferson’s unexpected intrusion, had been followed by other interviews more secret and more successful, and the plausible secretary had contrived so well to persuade the girl that he really thought the world of her, and that a brilliant future awaited her as his wife, that it was not long before he found her in a mood to refuse him nothing.

Bagley urged immediate marriage; he insinuated that Jefferson had treated her shamefully and that she owed it to herself to show the world that there were other men as good as the one who had jilted her.  He argued that in view of the Senator being bent on the match with Ryder’s son it would be worse than useless for him, Bagley, to make formal application for her hand, so, as he explained, the only thing which remained was a runaway marriage.  Confronted with the fait accompli, papa Roberts would bow to the inevitable.  They could get married quietly in town, go away for a short trip, and when the Senator had gotten over his first disappointment they would be welcomed back with open arms.

Kate listened willingly enough to this specious reasoning.  In her heart she was piqued at Jefferson’s indifference and she was foolish enough to really believe that this marriage with a British nobleman, twice removed, would be in the nature of a triumph over him.  Besides, this project of an elopement appealed strangely to her frivolous imagination; it put her in the same class as all her favourite novel heroines.  And it would be capital fun!

Meantime, Senator Roberts, in blissful ignorance of this little plot against his domestic peace, was growing impatient and he approached his friend Ryder once more on the subject of his son Jefferson.  The young man, he said, had been back from Europe some time.  He insisted on knowing what his attitude was towards his daughter.  If they were engaged to be married he said there should be a public announcement of the fact.  It was unfair to him and a slight to his daughter to let matters hang fire in this unsatisfactory way and he hinted that both himself and his daughter might demand their passports from the Ryder mansion unless some explanation were forthcoming.