the servants should not be set gossiping. But now, with an inward jolt, he asked, Had he been making an ass of himself? His hand, already inserted a second time to draw out more letters, came forth empty. He noticed that her eyes were on it as he turned the palm of his hand toward him, fingers doubled and nails in a line. He studied them.

She studied the letters already lying in an unsorted heap. They seemed not to interest. She pressed her handkerchief to her lips and raised her eyes.

"I would have told you before, only only"-her beautiful mouth quivered, and her eyes fell again-"you are difficult to talk to."

"Am I?" said Napier in a tone of polite surprise, still studying his nails. "For me, yes. You make it difficult. Why do you, Mr. Napier?"

That man must have a heart of stone to resist an appeal so voiced.

"Perhaps you imagine it," he said, taking refuge in pulling out the rest of the letters and sorting them into piles.

She stood as though too discouraged to continue, too listless to go away. But when in the midst of his sorting Napier glanced at her, he discovered no listlessness in the eyes that kept tally of the letters he was dealing out. "What earthly good does it do her to read the outsides of our envelops?" he wondered.

"I've been unhappy," she went on, "most unhappy under my enforced silence. I've wanted so much that you, anyhow, should know the truth."

"I don't know why I especially—” he began.

"No! no! no!" she said a little wildly, despite the hushed softness of her tone; "you don't know. And it's a good thing -a good thing you don't. But I'm too unhappy under the innocent little deceit that 's been forced on me. There must be an end of it. We had quarreled, the Pforzheims and I. That is, they quarreled. Each wanted to marry me. Oh, it was dreadful! More devoted to each other than any brothers I 've ever known. They wanted to fight a duel about it."

"Their aunt did n't let you know they were here, then?"

"Not a word. Oh, they no doubt told her not to; for of course I would never have come if I'd known. Never in this world!"

"Well, we must admit they behave well in the circumstances."

"I've seen to that," she said with great firmness. "I threatened them. I would n't stay here an hour, I said, if they swerved a hair's-breadth from the rôle of strangers. Now"-her voice altered suddenly as though out of weariness after immense effort-"now you know."

Napier took out the last letters.

"I expect," he said kindly, "it's been hard enough for you-at times."

"The strain is frightful." She swallowed and began again, "I-maybe you 've noticed-they will write to me from time to time."

She waited. Napier's face was as blank as the new sheet of blotting-paper in front of the great presentation inkstand.

"Well, is it my fault?" she demanded. "I've tried to make them see what an equivocal position it puts me in, how unfair—” Her face yearned for sympathy.

Napier went on with his sorting.

"It 's too nerve-racking," she said, with increasing agitation. "Carl does n't know about Ernst's letters, and Ernst does n't know about Carl's. Each one thinks the other has got over that old madness. But the letters they write me! Frantic!" She came closer still. She laid her hand on Napier's sleeve. "Do you know, sometimes I'm afraid-" She stopped as a step sounded on the gravel.

"The Pforzheims!" Napier said to himself, interpreting, as he thought, the look on the face she had turned sharply to the

door in the act of withdrawing from his side.

But a very different apparition stood there, the girl in the Mercury cap, not so blithe as the day before; eager still, but wistful.

"Why, my dear Nan!" Miss von Schwarzenberg said again, precisely as she had before. "I told you I would come for you."

"Yes, 'in the afternoon,' you said. But I could n't wait. Don't look like that, dearest." She had lowered her voice as Miss von Schwarzenberg joined her in the lobby. "I began to be afraid I'd only dreamed that you were SO near again. And then I remembered things you said to me last night—”

Miss von Schwarzenberg answered in a voice lower still, so low that Napier heard nothing. He gathered up. Sir William's letters and his own. As he went with them into the library, Miss von Schwarzenberg turned hastily. "I'll just go and see if Lady McIntyre can spare me for two minutes. I'll meet you out there by the clump of firs."

"All right," the girl said quietly and turned away.

Miss von Schwarzenberg knew as well as Napier did that Lady McIntyre was in the breakfast-room looking at the illustrated papers over her second cup of coffee. But Miss von Schwarzenberg hurried up-stairs.

Ordinarily Napier would have sat reading and answering his own letters till what time Sir William should come in from his ride. To-day he stood by the library fire "doing just nothing at all," he would have said. In reality he was looking still at the face of the girl. What had the Schwarzenberg been saying to her? It was n't at all the face she had brought here the evening before. And if Julian Grant had been struck by the happy faith in its yesterday aspect, Napier, though he would have ridiculed the idea, found something rather touching in the hurt steadfastness it showed to-day. Not a hint of reproach; she had smiled at her friend. "But it is n't the

same face," Napier repeated to himself; and before he had at all made up his mind what he would do next, he was going through the hall on his way out. His walk might have carried him past the firs but for the fact that it ended abruptly in the hall.

She was there, pulling off her gloves and holding her hands over the fire.

"It is cold," Napier said, and he seized the poker. The flames sprang up and danced on the girl's face.

"Oh, my! how nice!" Her smile was not so chastened but that it showed the white, even teeth, the two canines as pointed as a hound's. "You are the private secretary, are n't you?"

"What makes you think that?" he asked, a little on his dignity.

"Well, the other one was 'Julian,' was n't he?"

Napier did n't much like this familiarity with a Christian name on the part of a stranger, though on the girl's lips "Julian" sounded, what she afterward proclaimed it, "one of the most beautiful names in the world." There were others -not that Napier for a moment wished the habit to spread-which might sound. rather agreeable, too, uttered in the same

way.

“I'm not Julian. I am Gavan Napier." "I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Napier." She held out her hand. It was still cold, and not like the hand of a grown person, to Napier's sense. Like a child's. She looked at him inquiringly. He said nothing, only glanced round the hall in an undecided fashion after releasing her hand, and then put his letters down on the nearest chair. "I hope I 'm not in your way," the girl said. As still he did not instantly answer, she added: "You must tell me, please. You see, I don't know at all what private secretaries do. You are the first one I ever met."

He laughed, and said they were a good deal like other people so far as he 'd observed, and did n't do anything in particular.

Miss Ellis declared she knew better than that.

"That's where you sit, is n't it,"-she nodded at the big table,-"writing your despatches? And I suppose everybody goes by on tiptoe, and nobody dares speak to you. Of course I ought n't to be here!" "Oh, yes, you ought."

"No. I ought by rights to be out by the firs. But I was cold, and I did n't see why I should wait out by the firs when there was a fire here doing nobody any good."

She misinterpreted his steady look. "Oh, my! you think I ought to have gone out and waited by the-"

"Nothing of the sort! I should n't have thought half so well of you if you had gone out and waited by the firs."

But the wing-capped head, with its overweight of hair, turned anxiously toward the staircase by which Greta had vanished. "Yes, I see now I ought n't to have stayed in here. That's one of the things Greta means by 'so very American.'"

"American! For the honor of my native land I 'll assure you it 's every bit as much Scotch. English, too. Any sensible-"

"It is n't German," she said quickly. "I've often heard Greta say, 'The great thing is to learn instinctive obedience.'

"But why on earth should you obey Miss von Schwarzenberg?"

"Oh, first of all, because Greta 's the cleverest as well as the most splendid person in the world," she glowed with it, -"and knows more in a minute than I do in a year."

Napier laughed at that reason, so Miss Ellis produced another.

"And, then, you see, ever since I was seventeen I always have obeyed Gretawhen I was good," she threw in quickly, with a self-convicting laugh. "Greta might say-only she 's too kind-that my good days were few and far between."

"How long have you known Miss von Schwarzenberg?"

"Oh, for ages. Ever since I was seventeen."

"That must have been a long time ago!"

"Well, it is. It 's going on six years." To have held the affection and admiration of a creature like this for six years! "It's long enough to know a person tolerably well," he said reflectively as Miss von Schwarzenberg mounted in his thoughts to a higher plane.

"Yes, if only the time had n't been so broken up," Miss Ellis complained.

"How was that?" Napier sat down on the high fender.

"Well, you see, Greta-will it hold me, too?" She looked doubtfully at the brass bar.

"Oh, yes," he reassured her; "it would hold ten of you." His smiling glance took note of the small-boned hands that clutched the brass on each side. From the delicate ankles and the impossible feet up to the slim neck there was n't enough substance in her to furnish forth a good British specimen of half her age. Yet when she stood up she was not only tall; she was almost commanding. That was partly carriage, he decided, and partlywell, what was it?

"The trouble about Greta," she went on, "is that she's a person everybody is always wanting. always wanting. Then, added to that, she is the best daughter in the world. Every year she went home for several months. But she always got back in time!" The girl smiled an odd smile, not as though intended for Napier at all; intended, no doubt, for an invisible Greta. But why should Greta have it all to herself?

"In time for what?" said Napier, looking down at the clear-cut profile at his side.

"She always got back-we 've often talked about it-just as I was about to commit some awful mistake. What she 's saved me from!"

Napier was morally certain he could have got her, if only for the honor and glory of Greta, to enumerate one or two of these timely rescues, if, by a stroke of rank bad luck, Julian had n't appeared at that moment.

"Oh, my!" said Miss Ellis under her breath, which was silly as well as slightly

irritating. Moreover, this was a time of day, as none knew better than Julian, when the private secretary was not supposed to be accessible to outside friends. He would by rights be in the library, buried in the morning's work. And, further, it was not lost on Napier that "old Julian" did n't so much as trouble to affect surprise at finding Miss Ellis sitting on the Kirklamont fender; at an hour, too, which must be considered distinctly early for a visit even for the most familiar friend of the house.

With a casual "Hello!" Julian came marching over to the fireplace.

"You 're being very energetic all of a sudden," Napier said, with his smiling malice. "This early worm, Miss Ellis, is Mr. Grant."

"I'm very glad to meet you." She stood up and held out her hand.

"She's an early worm herself. Are n't you?" said Mr. Grant. "Good thing, "Good thing, too. If you had n't shouted, I might n't have noticed that brute."

"Was n't it awful?" She turned to Napier. "I was going up that little hill in front of the inn, and I saw a man in a field down below just beating and beating a horse. Oh, my! I screamed at him to stop, and then Mr. Grant came along the lower road." Smiling, she looked at Julian. "I wonder what would have happened if I had n't."

"What would have happened? Who to?"

"Well-er,"-Julian laughed out, as he used to in the old Eton days,-"I suppose I meant to the horse.”

"Oh, to the horse. Why, just what did happen? That horrid man would have stopped-"

"I hae ma doots." Julian was still smiling.

"Really!" She opened her gray eyes very wide.

"Well," said Julian, "have n't you?" "No, indeed. If he had n't stopped, I should have gone down."

Both men laughed.

"I should have stopped it," she said with firmness. "And I should have asked him to promise not to do it again."

"Oh, you would! I can't see Jock Gillies promising that."

"Very well, then, if he would n't promise, I should have told him I would have to report him. But now I can leave it to you. He did n't like your catching him. I could see that."

"Well, he 's one of our hinds." "One of your what?"

She capped his explanation with the

comment:

"Sounds to me like Shakspere." And then, smiling into his eyes, added, "Oh, my! has n't it been a splendid morning!" And did they have many days so unScotch-misty as this?

They went on uttering banalities about the morning and the country-side, but smiling into each other's faces in a way that said nothing in all this land they had fallen to praising was so interesting as something each one saw in the other's eyes.

Napier sat on the fender smiling to himself. Fancy old Julian! Do him all the good in the world to have a girl looking at him like that. And for Julian to be aware of it, to get his head out of the clouds and go in for anything as normal and rational as a little flirtation with a nicish sort of girl!

Napier must encourage this departure. He encouraged it in the first instance by effacing himself.

"I do so want to see as much as I can of" she meant Mr. Grant, as you could see before she finished, but she called him "this lovely coast." And could he advise her what to begin with?

knew it from the back of a horse as the