The letter contained these lines: "I know you at length for the cunning scamp you are. How you must have laughed at me. But I forgive you. We shall be away a year, at least. As always, everything I have is yours. Let us find you here on our return. I cannot write more. My heart is too full. Pinsent, she loves me! D. H." The last three words were deeply underlined. By the end of that week I had completed the revision of my book and forwarded the manuscript to Mr. Coen. Afterwards, I was uncomfortably lonely and unoccupied. I waited in from three to five every afternoon, but no one came. The rest of the days I spent wandering about the streets nursing the long sickness of too much thinking. The end of it was, I disobeyed Miss Ottley and went one afternoon to call on her. I might as well have saved myself the trouble. She was "out," likewise her father and Dr. Belleville. Two days later I called again. Again everyone was out. Then I wrote a guarded note and sent it with an advance copy of my book, asking for an expression of her opinion. After much waiting, I received a long typewritten disquisition challenging on apocryphal authority my attribution of a stele superscribed by Amen-aken to the fourteenth dynasty. It was signed by Miss Ottley, but I failed to recognise it as her composition. One evening, however, having nothing else to do, I applied to its verbiage the simple rules of a well-known cipher. This gave me an astonishing result. "Impossible see you without endangering your life. Constant supervision." But it was worth testing the matter further. I therefore composed a formal reply to the challenge, showing my reasons for concluding that Amen-aken had unwarrantably altered for purposes of his own glorification the historic record of a predecessor. I used the same cipher and embodied the following message by its aid: "Shall pass the house before midnight Friday. Throw letter from window explaining all! I live to serve you." This document I forwarded to Miss Ottley enclosed in a letter in which I took pains to show that I had been disappointed by her criticism, and that I was not anxious for the correspondence to be continued. Then I waited as patiently as possible for Friday to come round. The hours passed with leaden feet, but they passed--and midnight found me in the lane walking slowly by the house. It was wrapped in gloom from roof to basement, but her window was open. As the clocks began to chime, a white thing flashed out and fluttered to my feet. It was a kerchief weighted with a golden bracelet. I felt a paper crinkle in its folds. Hastily concealing it within my coat, I pressed on and returned by a circuitous route to Bruton Street. Soon I was poring over my treasure. It was typewritten like the challenge. It read: "I have been obliged to typewrite this, because I am a close prisoner and am forbidden the use of pen or pencil. But they make me work as their stenographer some hours each day--and I was forced to seize the opportunity so presented. Thank God you understood the cipher. If you love me give out that you proceed immediately to Egypt. Then go to Paris and return to London under another name and well disguised. Take lodgings East; and wait until you see in Personal Column of _Daily Wire_ directions addressed to 'D. Menchikoff!' Follow them implicitly! Am in power of fiends. Open opposition perilous. Must allay suspicion. Otherwise forced immediate marriage B." Here the missive ended.