"Well, Mr. Preston, we have received that responsible word of you at last!"
"What's that?"
"Yes; your letter finally caught Mrs. Thorne at Constantinople—she had left France—and she replied to mother. The letter came yesterday."
"Yesterday?" Preston found himself repeating dully. "Before you wrote your note to me?"
"Yes. But does that not satisfy you? Was not that the lacking essential?"
"Yes," he repeated weakly, feeling a queer sinking sensation of disappointment, which he knew the girl must notice.
"So that," he comprehended audibly, "was why you were willing to write me as you did, and could ask me to go to Cornwall with you?"
The girl laughed triumphantly.
"I thought you would think something like that, so I preserved the answer. Here is the letter," she took it from the table drawer. "Do you want to see it?"
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