arrival of Miss Greta's "little friend."

He stood in front of the fireplace, waiting for Andrews to bring in the post. At that particular moment there wasn'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 would be out riding; Lady McIntyre dawdling over her late breakfast, and Madge in the schoolroom, as Napier could all too plainly hear, practising with that new ruthlessness introduced by Miss von Schwarzenberg.

Miss Greta was never so at a loss as to enter without her little excuse, "I think I must have left my knitting." Or, sans phrase, she would go to the writing table and consult Whitaker or Bradshaw. 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 out trains.

It wasn't the first, by several score of times, that 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 really falling in love. One day, as he was sorting the letters, she had stood at the table beside him, durchblattering Bradshaw with piteous aimlessness. 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 sometimes 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 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. Wasn't she invariably here about two minutes before Andrews brought in the bag?

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 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 ... the Pforzheims are old friends of my family."

"Oh?" said Napier.

"Their father and my father were brothers-in-arms," she went on in that heroine-of-melodrama style she sometimes affected. "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."

Napier laid down the newspaper. "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 down the bag.

Miss von Schwarzenberg did not move till Andrews had gone out. She did not move even then, until Napier found his keys, selected his duplicate, fitted it to the lock, and 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 wasn't the first time that she had executed this simple manœuver, if manœuver 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 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 envelopes? 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, in spite of 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. You see, we had quarreled, the Pforzheims and I. That is, they quarreled. They each wanted to marry me. Oh, it was dreadful! They wanted to fight a duel...."

"About...?" Napier laid a long official envelope on the top of Sir William's pile.

"About me," she said with lowered eyes. "That was why I went to America. I couldn't bear it. I said: 'We are strangers from this day!' And so,"—she pressed her handkerchief again to her lips—"and so we met like that. I told them I wouldn't stay here an hour if they swerved a hair's breath from the role 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 as blank as the new sheet of blotting paper in front of the great presentation ink-stand.

"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. "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 drew back, as a step