Albeit I know the trivial causes for which people employ the telegraph-wires nowadays, I never can get over my primal deadly fear of those yellow envelopes, that seem emblems and messengers of battle, murder, and sudden death.

As I tear it open, a hundred horrible impossible possibilities flash across my brain.
Algy and Barbara have both been killed in a railway-accident, and have telegraphed to tell me so; the same fate has happened to Roger, and he has adopted the same course.
"_Algernon Grey to Lady Tempest._ "Cannot come: not allowed.

_He_ has turned nasty." The paper drops into my lap, as I draw a long breath of mingled relief and disappointment.

A whole long evening--long night of this solitude before me! perhaps much more, for they do not even say that they will come to-morrow! I _must_ utter my disappointment to somebody, even if it is only the footman.
"They are not coming!" say I, plaintively; then, recollecting and explaining myself, "I mean, they need not send in dinner! I will not have any!" I _cannot_ stand another repast--three times longer than the last too--for one _can_ abridge luncheon, seated in lorn dignity between the staring dead on the walls, and the obsequious living.
As soon as the man is fairly out of the room, I cry again.

Yes, though my hair is readjusted, though I spent more than a quarter of an hour in bathing my eyes, and restoring some semblance of white to their lids, though I had resolved--and without much difficulty, too, hitherto--to be dry-eyed for the rest of the evening.