proceeding to describe with mock braggadoccio how he'd completely taken the shine out of the champion. That person, handing tea, contented himself with privately observing yet again how his friend, long and lithe and dark, offered to the rotund little figure of the eminent official a contrast that ministered pleasantly to a sense of the ludicrous. Sir William's bald bullet head barely reached the height of Julian's chest. But it was notorious—and Napier had not worked for two years with Sir William without finding good reason to share the prevalent opinion—that inside the aforesaid bullet was an uncommon amount of shrewd sense and a highly developed skill in organizing power.

Sir William ran his department as he ran his vast commercial enterprises, with an ease that was own child of intelligence of a high degree. But now, as though it were the main factor in life, he talked golf.

The governess, after a perfunctory "how do you do" to the visitor, had leaned over to stroke the Aberdeen. The lady's full-moon face—with its heavy, shapely nose, its smooth apple cheeks, its quiet, beautiful mouth—was bent down till her chin rested on her generous bust. It occurred to Napier that she often adopted this pose. It gave her an air of pensiveness, of submission, the more striking in a person of so much character.

Also, the little tendrils of yellow hair that escaped from under the Gretchen-like banded braids cast delicate shadows on the whitest neck Napier had ever seen. Oh, she had her points.

"Did you hear, Mr. Grant?" Madge called out. "Miss von Schwarzenberg says now she wants to learn our foolish national game."

"Never!" Julian turned back to the tea-table. His tone was faintly ironic—as though the sensation created by this lady's conversion to golf seemed disproportionate to its importance.

Lady McIntyre lifted her appealing eyes. "I wonder if you'd be very kind, Mr. Grant, and help the children to teach Miss von Schwarzenberg?"

The almost infinitesimal pause was cancelled, obliterated, by Miss von Schwarzenberg's promptitude. "Oh, I couldn't think of being such a trouble." She had risen. "Sit here, Mr. Grant," she said. "Yes, please. I've finished." In spite of his protest, she retired to a chair on the far side of the fireplace—Napier's side—and picked up her knitting.

Madge followed, dog-like, and so did the Aberdeen.

"It is a comfort," Lady McIntyre went on, "to find such a terribly clever person"—she nodded significantly in the direction of Miss von Schwarzenberg—"taking an interest in the things ordinary mortals care about. It's been the one fault I've had to find with Greta. She doesn't play games. They don't, you know. But the Germans are a wonderful people! Take this young girl"—she lowered her voice. But, however, little of the conversation was lost on Miss von Schwarzenberg. She knitted steadily. Madge played with the dog.

"Greta's only twenty-five or six," Lady McIntyre went on. "Her father was an officer of Uhlans. An invalid now. And somehow they lost their money. An uncle in America is tremendously rich, and he's had Greta at one of the great women's colleges over there. She insisted on going home every summer ... so domestic, the Germans! I always think it's extremely nice of them to feel affectionate toward such a horrid country as Germany—don't you, Mr. Grant? And such a language to wrestle with, poor things! Do you know, they call a thimble a finger hat? Yes, and a pin a stick needle!"

"Well, well!"—Sir William broke off in the middle of the golf discussion, and rattled his seals with great vigor, as though they were a summons to industry—a simulacrum of factory bell or works whistle. "I must write one more letter. No, I don't need you, Gavan."

"But that translation?"

"It's done."

"Done!" said the astonished Napier.

"And couldn't be better," said Sir William, as he disappeared into the library.

"Miss Greta did it!" triumphed Bobby.

"I wonder," said the lady, smiling, "which of you two would go and get me the rest of my wool?"

Bobby was on his feet, staring helplessly round.

"In your work bag?" asked Madge.

Greta nodded, and the two raced each other upstairs. Miss Greta lifted her candid eyes. "Does it require a great deal of practice, Mr. Napier, to play golf passably?" She blushed slightly as she went on: "I suppose I've hoped that if I watched you, I'd stand a better chance of playing a fair game myself some day. Fair, that is," she added, with her meek droop of the braid-crowned head, "fair for a woman."

"I'm sure you know," Napier returned a little impatiently, "that plenty of women play very well."

"Do you mean," she inquired with her soft persistence, "you'd ever be so kind as to give me a tip or two?"

He didn't answer at once, and she turned in her chair to look at him. Out from her disarranged cushion rolled a large ball of field gray. It bumped against Napier's ankle and rebounded to the wall.

"Isn't this the wool you were looking for?" He took it up by the loose end, and rapidly unrolled several yards of it.

"Thank you so much! I can't think how it got down here." She took the ball from him, and remained standing while she rewound. "After all, I sha'n't much more than have time to get on my things." She glanced at the clock.

"Where are you going?" Lady McIntyre asked the question from habit. Seldom was Greta allowed to leave the room without that question.

"You were so kind as to say I might have the cart."

"Oh, yes," Lady McIntyre remembered.

"What for?" asked Bobby, tumbling downstairs. "Want to be driven somewhere? Bags I—"

"Certainly not!" Madge called out to him. And then in a markedly different tone, "I've turned everything out of.... Oh, you've got it!"

It was all right, Miss Greta said comprehensively. She would go to the station alone.

"Oh, please let me come!" Madge begged.

Miss von Schwarzenberg shook her head. Madge looked at her wistfully. "I wish she wasn't 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's 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 mustn'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." Miss Greta glanced again at the clock as she gathered up her knitting.

"Cart wasn't ordered till six," Madge threw in. "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. "Quite a nice girl, but ..." (a deprecatory wave of one hand), "well, crude. Western, you know. 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 wasn'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 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