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alone; father dead; mother in reduced circumstances. 'To keep the home together, poor Sissie decided——'

'Precisely so,' I murmured, knocking off my ash. 'The usual self-sacrifice! Case quite normal! Everything en regle!'

'You don't mean to say you doubt it?' he cried, flushing up, and evidently regarding me as a hopeless cynic. 'I do assure you, Dr. Cumberledge, the poor child—though miles, of course, below Miss Tepping's level—is as innocent, and as good——'

'As a flower in May. Oh, yes; I don't doubt it. How did you come to propose to her, though?'

He reddened a little. 'Well, it was almost accidental,' he said, sheepishly. 'I called there one evening, and her mother had a headache and went up to bed. And when we two were left alone, Sissie talked a great deal about her future and how hard her life was. And after a while she broke down and began to cry. And then——'

I cut him short with a wave of my hand. 'You need say no more,' I put in, with a sympathetic face. 'We have all been there.'

We paused a moment, while I puffed smoke at the photograph again.

'Well,' I said at last, 'her face looks to me really simple and nice. It is a good face. Do you see her often?'

'Oh, no; she's on tour.'

'In the provinces?'

'M'yes; just at present, at Scarborough.'

'But she writes to you?'

'Every day.'

'Would you think it an unpardonable impertinence if I made bold to ask whether it would be possible for you to show me a specimen of her letters?'