"Oh, how rash and foolish I have been!" thought Roma, the next day, when she heard of Jesse Devereaux\'s accident.

"His arm broken by a fall on the sands last night—most probably on his way to see me, poor fellow! And in my angry resentment at my disappointment I have broken our engagement! How rash and foolish I am, and how much I regret it! I must make it up with him at once, my darling!" she cried repentantly, and hurried to her mother.

"Mamma, you were right last night. I regret my hasty action in dismissing Jesse without a hearing. How can I make it up with him?"

"You can send another note of explanation, asking his forgiveness," suggested Mrs. Clarke.

"Oh, mamma, if I could only go to him myself!" she cried, impatient for the reconciliation.

"It would not be exactly proper, my dear."

"But we are engaged."

"You have broken the engagement."

[Pg 78]

Roma uttered a cry of grief and chagrin that touched her mother\'s heart.

"Poor dear, you are suffering, as I foreboded, for last night\'s folly," she sighed.

"Please don\'t lecture me, mamma. I\'m wretched enough without that!"

"I only meant to sympathize with you, dear."

"Then help me—that is the best sort of sympathy. I suppose it wouldn\'t be improper for you to call on Jesse, at his hotel, would it?"

"No, I suppose not."

"Then I will write my note to him, and you can take it—will you?"

Mrs. Clarke assented, and was on the point of starting when a messenger arrived with a note for Roma, replying to hers of the night before.

In spite of his broken right arm, Jesse Devereaux had managed a scrawl with his left hand, and Roma tore it open with a burning face and wildly beating heart, quickly mastering its contents, which read:

    Mr. Devereaux accepts his dismissal with equanimity, feeling sure from this display of Miss Clarke\'s hasty temper that he has had a lucky escape.

It was cool, curt, airy, almost to insolence;[Pg 79] a fitting match for her own; and Roma gasped and almost fainted.

Where was all her boasting, now, that she would teach him a lesson; that he would be back in a day begging her to take back his ring?

She had met her match; she realized it now; remembering, all too late, how hard he had been to win; a lukewarm lover, after all, and perhaps glad now of his release.

Oh, if she could but have recalled that silly not............