"My dear!" she exclaimed, "we can't go all the way to New York even to see the Seraph. You suggested Taormina when you left here...."

"Quite so," I assented.

"Did you order rooms?"

"Yes."

"Then we can't go to New York."

"I never proposed to."

"Why did you invite the Seraph to lunch with us there?"

"I didn't."

"Toby!"

She was not satisfied till I spelt out the draft of the cable word by word; and then she rather resented my remarks about the incurable sloppiness of the female mind. As a matter of fact, I cannot claim originality for the phrase; I believe a Liberal Prime Minister coined it as a terse description of his opponents' mental shortcomings. I only borrowed it for the nonce.

"Will--you--lunch--Christmas Day----" I pointed out. "It doesn't say we shall be there to receive him."

"I don't understand it," she said rather wearily. I have since honourably resolved not to be guilty of facetiousness when we are married, but at the moment I was rather pleased with my little stratagem.

"I'm arranging for some one to be there to meet him," I said.

"Who?" she asked.

"A young woman named Sylvia Roden," I answered.

And even then her appreciation of my diplomacy was grudging.

EPILOGUE

TRISTRAM.

"Raise the light, my page! that I may see her-- Thou art come at last, then, haughty Queen?

Long I've waited, long I've fought my fever; Late thou comest, cruel hast thou been."

ISEULT.

"Blame me not, poor sufferer! that I tarried; Bound I was, I could not break the band.

Chide not with the past, but feel the present!

I am here--we meet--I hold thy hand."

MATTHEW ARNOLD: "Tristram and Iseult."

I had intended to write no more, but as we left the Consulate to-day after our wedding, a cable was handed me by my smiling Italian valet.

"Paddy Culling for a bob!" I said, as I opened it and prepared for some whimsical message of congratulation.

I was wrong. The cable was my reply from Yokohama.

"No offence intended," it ran. "Delighted lunch as suggested.--SERAPH."

THE END