coming." Then with a gleam, "I believe you do, too."

Miss von Schwarzenberg smiled. "Who is it?" demanded Bobby. "Oh, a little American friend of mine, a girl I went to school with."

"Her name 's Nan Ellis," Madge informed the company, gloomily, "and she is not much to look at and not at all rich and not much of anything that I can discover. Just a millstone round Miss Greta's neck.”

"We must n't say that." Miss Greta was winding the last couple of yards. "You see, she's an orphan, and I rather took her under my wing at school, poor child!"

Bobby asked if the American was "going to stay with us."

"Oh, no," said the wool-winder, now at the end of her task. "At the inn, of course."

But Miss Greta was to bring the girl to see them, Lady McIntyre said.

"Any friend of Miss Greta's

"It 's very kind of you, dear Lady McIntyre." Miss Greta glanced again at the clock as she gathered up her knitting.

"Cart was n't ordered till six," Madge threw in. "And you always say it is very kind of mama. Don't you mean to bring

her here at all?".

"I should be delighted; but I can't flatter myself that my little friend would interest you." She swept the circle.

"Why not?" said Bobby.

"Oh, well,"-Miss von Schwarzenberg was plainly not answering Master Bobby, -"she's quite a nice girl; but"-A deprecatory wave of one hand-"well, crude; Western, you know."

"What I think is that you 're far too good-natured," announced Madge. "And you did tell her not to come, too."

Miss von Schwarzenberg smiled. "She has grown used to looking to me for the summer. I tried to explain that-" the pause was eloquent of a delicate desire to spare feelings-"that I was n't taking a holiday myself this year. But," on her way out of the hall Miss Greta laughed over her shoulder-"she 's

not perhaps so very quick at-how do you say it?-not so quick at the uptake." She cast it back in a way that stirred a little breeze of laughter behind her disappearing figure. She turned at the sound of a motor-car rushing up the drive.

Through the open lobby doors a girl was seen rising from her seat and scanning Kirklamont Hall with a slight frown. As the car swerved round to the entrance she called out to the chauffeur in a voice of appalling distinctness and most unmistakably transatlantic:

"Are you sure this is the place? It isn't my idea of a-oh," she had given one glance through the lobby, and was out of the car as a bird goes over a hedge,— "it is! it is!" The girl stood in the hall, holding out her hands. "Greta!"

"My dear Nan." Miss von Schwarzenberg had hastened forward, more flurried than anybody there had ever seen her.

"Oh, my!" said the new-comer, with a face of rapture. "Oh, my!" and she fell to hugging Miss von Schwarzenberg.

Bobby sat contorting his long legs and arms with unregenerate glee at Fräulein's struggle to be cordial, and at the same time to disengage herself as rapidly as possible.

Lady McIntyre left her settle and pattered forward with hospitable intent. An instant of indecision on Miss von Schwarzenberg's part, and then Miss Ellis was duly presented.

She was n't nearly so tall as Napier had thought her when she stood up in the car. This was because her figure was slight and extremely erect. For the rest, she had a small head, overweighted with a profusion of bright-brown hair; a rather childish face under a little golden-brown hat, guiltless of trimming, but for the two brown wings set one on each side, rather far back. "The kind of hat," Napier pointed out afterward, "that Phidias gave to Mercury. Cheek for a girl to wear a hat like that!"

Even under her manifest excitement, the delicate oval of the girl's face showed only a faint tinge of color. Miss von Schwarzenberg's round cheeks were richest carmine.

"Surely you 've finished!" Napier heard Miss Greta say.

"Do you think I have?" The girl's eyes left the approaching figures to reflect an even greater interest upon a plate of sugared cakes. When she had tasted one she smiled, and turned to look again. where all the rest were looking. "Oh, my!" she said, "what funny dawgs!"

one,

The hall was already a hive of excitement. Bobby and Madge bolted out as with cries of rapture. Lady McIntyre, hardly less pleased, prepared to follow with Julian. Napier sauntered slowly after them.

The elder Pforzheim entered with his brisk ceremoniousness and bowed low over Lady McIntyre's hand.

"My father has sent you those Russian boar-hounds he promised. Ernst has got them outside." He stood back in that empressé way of his that seemed to say, "My manners are far too perfect not to suffer others to precede." And the others, in the careless English way, did precede. They even blocked up the entrance, leaving Mr. Carl and his politeness in the rear. This manoeuver so obstructed the view that Miss Ellis rose and came a few paces nearer, hoping for a better sight of those exciting animals. Napier, glancing back, saw that Miss von Schwarzenberg, so eager for a move a moment ago, sat perfectly still.

"Did you ever see boar-hounds before, Greta? I never did?"

sight of Miss von Schwarzenberg's face she stopped short.

"I think you are making some mistake," said Mr. Ernst, trying to get past the congestion first on one side and then on the other.

"Oh, no, I'm not," that terribly carrying voice went on. "It 's because Greta has told me such a great deal about you—"

"Pardon!" He dodged first to the right and then to the left, like an untrained dog trying to get past you out of a gate.

"And you 're exactly like your picture, down to the cleft in your chin-" The girl hesitated again as Greta mumbled, and Pforzheim, with a desperate, “I must help my brother," forgot all his fine manners and pushed his way out.

"What's the matter, dearest? Ought n't I to have said that?" Then in a halfwhisper: "I never mentioned Ernst. And, after all, it was only Ernst that you—” "Will you be quiet?"

In another ten seconds they were whirling away in the car.

Napier walked half-way home with Grant as usual. He was amused at Julian's indignation. over Miss von Schwarzenberg's patronage of her "little friend." He was amused, too, at recalling Greta's elegant disgust at the way the girl "wolfed down" the cakes. Julian seemed not to have noticed any "wolfing." And then they quarreled a little over

a girl to come "winged like Mercury." Julian defended her. He 'd never seen a hat he liked better. It just suited that face of hers.

"Why, how do you do?" she said, with a quick turn. "I'm very glad to meet you."

Carl Pforzheim stared. Miss von Schwarzenberg shot forward and took Nan by the arm.

"In the midst of all the masses of strangers I've been seeing, you seem like an old friend. Tell him, Greta-" At

""That face'"! Napier mocked. "I suppose out of pure contentiousness you 'll be saying it 's pretty."

"Pretty! Pretty faces are cheap. That one has got the fineness of a wood anemone and the faith of a St. Francis. Did you ever see such faith in any pair of eyes? Ye gods! if I could believe in life as that. child does, if I were as serenely sure of everybody's good-will-" he threw out his walking-stick at the prison wall be

tween him and such freedoms, such innocent securities. "It 's pathetic, a person like that. Think of the knocks she 'll get! Think-"

"What I'm thinking of-I can't get it out of my mind, every time I go back to it; it seems to me stranger-the expression on the Schwarzenberg's face when the girl recognized Pforzheim."

"What sort of expression?" said Julian, absently.

"Hard to describe. And the way she looked after Carl with a sort of cowering apology before she plunged into the car. Now leave off quarreling with me. about the Mercury cap, and just tell me. Why the devil should that woman have pretended she 'd never seen the Pforzheims before she met them here?"

"How do you know she pretended?" "I was there. I saw them introduced."

CHAPTER III

HAT hall at Kirklamont, scene of

so much of the McIntyre family 2 life, was for Gavan Napier, as he looked back, forever associated with the most decisive hours in his own fate, as well as that of his closest friend. It meant to him, perhaps more than anything, the abiding memory of that morning after hist discovery of the carefully concealed previous acquaintance between Miss von Schwarzenberg and the Pforzheims. He stood in front of the fireplace looking again at the "Times" of the previous day while he waited for Andrews to bring in the post-bag.

At that particular moment there was n't anybody else in the hall. There probably soon would be somebody, Napier reflected with a mingled sense of amusement and uneasiness. For this was about the time Miss von Schwarzenberg was astute enough to choose for her little tête-à-têtes with the private secretary, always elaborately accidental. Sir William, as all the household knew, would, whatever the weather, be out riding; Lady McIntyre dawdling over her late breakfast; and Madge in the school-room, as

Napier could all too plainly hear, practising with that new ruthlessness introduced by Miss von Schwarzenberg.

So the coast would be clear.

Miss Greta was never so at a loss as to enter without her little excuse: "I think I must have left my knitting," or, "Lady McIntyre has been asking where that novel" Or, most favorite device of all, because it could be made part of an accepted routine, she would go to where the writing-materials lay on the big table. and carefully review the stock. From a stone bottle or basket on her arm she would produce a fresh supply of anything that might be lacking. She had particularly nice taste in the matter of fresh ink and clean receptacles. Sir William had been heard to declare there had never been such a thing as a decent pen in the hall till Miss von Schwarzenberg came here.

If she wanted to stay longer than she usually ventured, Whitaker or Bradshaw were her allies. There was always a semblance of reasonableness in such preoccupation. For Lady McIntyre had fallen into the habit of going to Miss Greta for every sort of service, from somebody's official style and title to looking up trains for expected guests, or for those little family expeditions and picnics which Madge was supposed to be bent on.

Well, it was n't the first by several score of time that, without any encouragement from him, young ladies had shown themselves fertile in pretexts for a little conversation with Mr. Napier. He himself was not in the least averse, as a rule, to a little harmless flirtation even with a governess. But suppose this particular young woman should, with the fatal German sentimentality, be falling really in love. You never knew what might happen. One day as he was sorting the letters she had stood at the table beside him, turning the leaves of Bradshaw with piteous aimlessness. It was out of the merest common humanity, he told himself, that he suggested: "Shall I look it up for you? Where do you want to go?"

With a heave of her high bosom she

had answered that some times she thought the place she'd best go to was the bottom of Kirklamont loch. Only the timely entrance of a servant with a telegram had, Napier felt, saved him from a most inconvenient scene. He reflected anxiously upon the high rate of suicide in Germany. It would be very awful if for the sake of his beaux yeux Miss Greta should find a watery grave.

He looked at the clock. If the post was late, so was Miss von Schwarzenberg.

Suddenly it came over Napier that she timed these entrances of hers not according to the clock and not according to his own movements. He was sometimes twenty minutes waiting there alone for the post to come in.

"God bless my soul!" he ejaculated mentally. Did n't she time her entrances invariably to about two minutes before Andrews brought in the bag? And how did she manage that if not by the luck of having a room which looked out on the inner court of Kirklamont? From her window Miss von Schwarzenberg could see the arrival of the post at the back entrance of the hall.

Before Napier had time to readjust himself to this new view of the lady's apparent interest in him, there she was, in her very feminine, rather Londony clothes, her intensely white, plump neck rising out of a lace blouse; her yellow hair bound in smooth braids round her head; a light dust of pearl powder over her pink cheeks. She looked like a girl on a Berlin chocolate box. No, she did n't, not to-day. There was too much purpose this morning, too much gravity in the handsome face, and no beating about the bush with knitting or stationery or Bradshaw.

She came straight over to the fireplace. "Mr. Napier, I should like to speak to you a moment."

Napier lowered his newspaper. "Yes, Miss von Schwarzenberg." "I don't know if you gathered yesterday, or whether you are ever likely to hear, that the Pforzheims are old friends of my family."

"Oh?" said Napier and then paused. “And, anyway, I 've been feeling for some time I'd like you to know."

Napier folded up the newspaper without

comment.

"Their father and my father," she said in that heroine of melodrama style she sometimes affected, "were brothers-inarms. They have been close friends since their university days."

"Really?" Napier's calm seemed to detract from her own.

The color surged into her round cheeks, but she held her head dauntlessly on its short, white neck as she confessed:

"Carl and Ernst have known me since I was a child."

Something inside Napier's mind said, "Ah, ha!" but it came out in the form of an almost indifferent "Indeed."

"I suppose," she challenged him, "you think, that being the case, it was very odd we should meet like strangers?"

"Oh, I dare say you had your reasons,' he said as Andrews came in. Napier walked the length of the hall to where the man had put the bag down on the big table in front of the cloak-room.

Miss von Schwarzenberg did not move till Andrews had gone out. She did not move even then until Napier, of set purpose a long time in finding his keys and a long time in selecting his duplicate and fitting it to the lock, at last threw back the leather flap and drew out the letters.

That instant, as though she had only just resumed control of her self-possession, Miss von Schwarzenberg, handkerchief in hand, moved softly down the hall and stood at Napier's side. It came over him that this was n't the first time, or yet the second, that she had executed this simple manœuver, if manoeuver it was. He knew now that he had been imputing to his own attractiveness her invariable drawing near while he transacted his business with the letter-bag. The little pause before Andrews left the room he had set down as a concession to the proprieties. More than ever, so he had read her, if she laid traps for little talks with the private secretary, was it important that