suddenness. The bright head dropped swiftly, and the flushed, shy little face buried itself in Pamela’s dress.

Dare smiled. There was no doubt as to the child’s identity; Pamela the second was Pamela the first in miniature.

“Somebody’s come for cake,” said Pamela, and tried to lift the hidden face from its resting place; but the child resisted her attempts.

“And somebody’s got a nasty shock,” Dare added, as he cut a slice of the most tempting dainty on the table and held it out invitingly. “Won’t you come and make friends?”

But Pamela the second merely peeped at him like a shy, inquisitive bird, and nestled closer in the sheltering arms. Experience, in the form of her father, had led her to be distrustful of men.

“See, Pamela,” coaxed her mother; “Mr Dare has a beautiful slice of cake for you. See!”

“Don’t want it,” Pamela pouted.

“But that’s rude,” remarked Pamela the first. “You mustn’t be naughty.”

“Oh, don’t!” pleaded Dare. “You only prejudice my chances.” He leaned over her chair, and placed the slice of cake in the chubby hand which opened and closed upon it shyly. “I’m awfully fond of cake too, Pamela,” he said. “You eat that piece, and I’ll eat a piece; and we’ll see who gets through first.”

“You’ll ruin her digestion,” Pamela the elder observed with smiling reproof, while Pamela the younger set her small teeth in the cake and munched it with evident appreciation. While she ate, she kept a suspicious but interested eye on the stranger, who was eating cake also with apparent whole-hearted enjoyment. To Pamela the second’s delight the stranger’s slice failed to disappear as rapidly as her own.

“You’ve won,” he cried, as the last mouthful was crammed with unfair haste upon its unmasticated predecessor.

Pamela the second licked her small fingers and laughed because the stranger was beaten and looked so sorry about it too. She hoped he was going to cry.

“Let’s try again,” he suggested, and cut a second and smaller slice.

Pamela scrambled down from her mother’s lap and approached near to him, leaning with her small sticky hands on his knees, and her greedy blue eyes on the cake.

“Try again!” she repeated delightedly, and held out an eager hand.

“It is just as well,” remarked Pamela the first, “that this doesn’t happen often.”

She met his eyes over the child’s bright head and returned their quiet smile. In making his bid for baby favours he was gaining more than he guessed. Before the second piece of cake was finished, Pamela the second was seated on his knee; and because he was badly beaten this time also, and seemed to mind his defeat even more than before, she rested her head contentedly against his sleeve, and evinced entire satisfaction at his expressions of disappointment. Pamela the second was hard-hearted and crowed loudly over her success.

“I think you may claim to have won this time,” said Pamela the first, watching the child’s friendly response to his overtures with pleased, surprised eyes.

He caught the reference.

“Through another defeat,” he said, “yes.”

“It is a greater victory than you imagine,” she added. “I have never known her won over by your sex before. You are accustomed to children?”

“Not accustomed,—little people don’t come my way; but I’m in sympathy with them. My tastes are infantile, you see.”

He rose shortly afterwards and took his departure. Pamela the second had gone off in pursuit of other diversion: Pamela the first accompanied him to the gate.

“I am sorry you are going back so soon,” she said as she shook hands with him. “I don’t feel as though we were new acquaintances. I seem to know you quite well.”

“Five years,” he returned... “I regard the friendship as dating from then. We are quite old friends really.”

“It’s odd,” she said, and laughed. “I am going to adopt your view. If you have known me for five years, it stands to reason that I must have known you too. Good-bye. Be sure to look us up when you come this way again.”

He looked into her eyes with a protracted, earnest gaze, and hesitated.

“I don’t know when that will be,” he answered slowly. “I don’t anticipate coming this way again for some while. When I do, you may be very sure of one thing,—that I shall look you up.”

Pamela went back to her seat under the trees, and thought about him for the rest of the afternoon. There was something—she could not define it satisfactorily—in the man’s personality that attracted her: she had never met any one before with whom she had felt so quickly at home. He was companionable and sympathetic. The odd mixture of serio-comic in his conversation left her slightly in doubt as to the entire sincerity of all he said; but this only further piqued her interest. It was possible to imagine him clothing in flippant language his deepest feelings with a view to disguising their earnestness. She could not conceive him ever betraying emotion. Abruptly she roused herself with a laugh, and consulted the watch at her wrist.

“Seven o’clock!” she mused. “A nice thing for a married woman to devote nearly two hours in a sentimental reverie about a stranger!”

She went indoors to change her dress. Arnott returned while she was upstairs. She heard him go to his dressing-room, and after a while he crossed the landing to her room, hesitated at the door, and finally entered. She observed that he was looking worried again. He appeared excited and irritable, and a restlessness most unusual in him kept him constantly on the move. He fingered things on the dressing-table, and brushed aside impatiently any article that came in his way.

Pamela wondered what it was that worried him so of late, but she did not like to question him. This worry harassed him usually on mail days. She was beginning to connect the trouble with his English letters. But for the fact that he never showed any anxiety with regard to their expenses, she would have concluded that he was financially embarrassed. But not once had he suggested to her that it would be wise to practise economy. He was, as a matter of fact, far more extravagant than she was. He spent money with the careless indifference of a man whose banking account more than sufficed for his needs.

“Mr Dare called this afternoon,” remarked Pamela, watching her husband as he fidgeted at her dressing-table. “He leaves Cape Town to-morrow. I thought you might like to see him, so I asked him to dine.”

He faced round abruptly and stared at her, frowning and displeased.

“He isn’t coming,” she added, meeting his vexed gaze, and feeling for the first time glad that Dare had refused the invitation. “He was engaged for to-night.”

“I’m not sorry,” he said, looking immeasurably relieved. “I’d rather have a quiet evening with you, Pam. Last night tired me; I’m feeling cheap.”

“It was thoughtless of me to have asked him,” said Pamela contritely. “But it’s all right, as it happens. We’ll have a Darby and Joan dinner, and you shall be as surly as you please, and sit and smoke all the evening. There.”

He pinched her ear.

“I’ll take you at your word