Calder looked at him.

"Well, you are a good chap. Dashed if I don't. Yes, I will. We'll enjoy ourselves like thunder. But I say, Merceron, I--I ought to write to her, oughtn't I?"

"I am just going to write myself."

"To--to say good-by, eh?"

"Yes."

"I shall write and break it off."

"Come along. We'll go to your rooms and got the thing done, and then catch the train. My luggage is at the station now."

"It won't take me a minute to get mine."

"Wentworth, I'm glad to be rid of her."

"All--oh, well--so am I," said Calder.

Late that evening the butler presented Miss Agatha Glyn with two letters on a salver. As her eye fell on the addresses, she started.

Her heart began to beat. She sat and looked at the two momentous missives.

"Now which," she thought, "shall I read first? And what shall I do, if they are both obstinate?"

There was another contingency which Miss Glyn did not contemplate.

After a long hesitation, she took up Charlie's letter, and opened it.

It was very short, and began abruptly without any words of address:

"I have received your letter. Your excuses make it worse. I could forgive everything except deceit. I leave London to-day. Good-by.--C.

M."

"Deceit!" cried Agatha. "How dare he? What a horrid boy!"

She was walking up and down the room in a state of great indignation.

She had never been talked to like that in her life before. It was ungentlemanly, cruel, brutal. She flung Charlie's letter angrily down on the table.

"I am sure poor dear old Calder won't treat me like that!" she exclaimed, taking up his letter.

It ran thus: "My dear Agatha:--I hope you will believe that I write this without any feeling of anger towards you. My regard for you remains very great, and I hope we shall always be very good friends; but, after long and careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the story Lord Thrapston told, me shows conclusively what I have been fearing for some time past--namely, that I have not been so lucky as to win a real affection from you, and that we are not likely to make one another happy. Therefore, thanking you very much for your kindness in the past, I think I had better restore your liberty to you. I shall hear with, very great pleasure of your happiness. I leave town to day for a little while, in order that you may not be exposed to the awkwardness of meeting me.

"Always your most sincerely,

"Calder Wentworth."

Agatha pa.s.sed her hand across her brow; then she reread Calder's letter, and then Charlie's. Yes, there, was not the least doubt about it! Both of the gentlemen had well, what they had done did not admit of being put into tolerable words. With a little shriek, Agatha flung herself on the sofa.

The door opened and Lord Thrapston entered.

"Well, Aggy, what's the news? Still bothered by your two young men?

Hullo! what's wrong?"

"Read them!" cried Agatha, with a gesture towards the table.

"Eh? Head what? Oh, I see."

He sat down at the table and put on his gla.s.ses. Agatha turned her face towards the wall; for her also everything was over. For a time no sound was audible save an occasional crackle of the note-paper in Lord Thrapston's shaking fingers. Then, to Agatha's indescribable indignation, there came another sort of crackle--a dry, grating, derisive chuckle--from that flinty-hearted old man, her grandfather.

"Good, monstrous good, 'pon my life!" said he.

"You're laughing at me!" she cried, leaping up.

"Well, my dear, I'm afraid I am."

"Oh, how cruel men are!"

"H'm! They're both men of spirit evidently."

"Calder I can just understand. I--perhaps I did treat Calder rather badly---"

"Oh, you go so far as to admit that, do you, Aggy?"

"But Charlie! Oh, to think that Charlie should treat me like that!" and she threw herself on the sofa again.

Lord Thrapston sat quite still. Presently Agatha rose, came to the table, and took up her two letters. She looked at them both; and the old man, seeming to notice nothing, yet kept his eye on her.

"I shall destroy these things," said she; and she tore Calder's letter into tiny fragments, and flung them on the fire. Charlie's she crumpled up and held in her hand.

"Good-night, grandpapa," she said wearily, and kissed him.

"Good-night, my dear," he answered.

And, whatever she did when she went upstairs, Lord Thrapston was in a position to swear that Charlie's letter was not destroyed in the drawing-room.

CHAPTER X

THE INCARNATION OF LADY AGATHA

"She's such a dear good girl, Mr. Wentworth," said Lady Merceron.

"She's the greatest comfort I have."

It was after luncheon at Langbury Court. Lady Merceron and Calder sat on the lawn: Mrs. Marland and Millie Bush.e.l.l were walking up and down; Charlie was lying in a hammock. A week had pa.s.sed since the two young men had startled Lady Merceron by their unexpected arrival, and since then the good lady had been doing her best to entertain them; for, as she could not help noticing-, they seemed a little dull. It was a great change from the whirl of London to the deep placidity of the Court, and Lady Merceron could not quite understand why Charlie had tired so soon of his excursion, or why his friend persisted with so much fervor that anything was better than London, and the Court was the most charming place he had ever seen. Of the two Charlie seemed to feel the ennui much the more severely. Yet, while Mr. Wentworth spoke of returning to town in a few weeks, Charlie a.s.severated that he had paid his last visit to that revolting and disappointing place. Lady Merceron wished she had Uncle Van by her side to explain these puzzling inconsistencies. However, there was a bright side to the affair: the presence of the young men was a G.o.dsend to poor Millie, who, by reason of the depressed state of agriculture, had been obliged this year to go without her usual six weeks of London in the season.

"And she never grumbles about it," said Lady Merceron admiringly. "She looks after her district, and takes a ride, and plays tennis, when she can get a game, poor girl, and is always cheerful and happy. She'd be a treasure of a wife to any man."