confidence.

"No, thank you, I won't sit down. I didn't mean to stay but half a minute ... though I'm afraid Greta may think, even now, that I still don't understand that her time belongs to you."

"But we are not such slave drivers!" The little lady shook her diamond ear-rings. Greta could certainly take any day off to be with her friend, and every day, she of course had several hours at her disposal, whenever she wished.

Miss von Schwarzenberg, in the act of descending the stairs, had paused the fraction of a second. "Oh, there you are!" she threw over the banisters toward Lady McIntyre.

It occurred to Napier that the girl standing between him and Julian was a little uneasy at being found so far this side of the firs.

"Yes," Lady McIntyre said, "I was just arranging with Miss Ellis that she must stay to luncheon."

"And I was just going to ask if you'd consent to our plan," Greta said as she joined the group. "We thought of lunching at the inn."

At sight of the smile on Miss von Schwarzenberg's face—still more at her "plan,"—the slight cloud of dubiety vanished from Miss Ellis. She stood in full sunshine.

"But why not lunch here?" urged Lady McIntyre.

"We want to talk America, don't we? And the old days?"

"Yes, yes," said her enraptured friend.

"Well, then,"—Lady McIntyre fell in with what she took to be the previous arrangement—"you'll bring her back to tea."

They all saw Miss Ellis to the door, and Miss Greta saw her to the first gate.

"I say," remarked Julian, when the lady of the house had also disappeared, "why shouldn't we take those two girls around?"

"Sir William. He'd never stand it."

"No, no! But after. He plays before tea, doesn't he?"

"Yes, before."

"Very well, then. We'll take 'em round after. I'll come with the motor." He caught up his cap. "You arrange it with the Paragon." Julian bolted off toward the footpath leading to the inn.

Did she realize that, the woman coming back with the reflective air? Apparently not. She lifted her bent head, and when she saw Napier was waiting there at the door alone she smiled. She was certainly very charming when she smiled.

"I don't want to disparage the golfing powers of either Bobby or Madge," Napier said, "but what do you say to a round with me after tea?"

She looked at him oddly. It struck Napier that she didn't apply her formula, "You are very kind." He was conscious of a slight embarrassment under her scrutiny.

"You say that because Lady McIntyre asked you to."

"Not only for that reason."

Whereat Miss Greta lowered her eyes. "What should I do about Nan Ellis?" she said.

"Oh, we've thought of that. Mr. Grant will look after her while you and I—" he smiled. "Shall we say half-past five?"

The china-blue eyes turned to the open door and to the gaitered rotundity approaching—Sir William coming up from the stable. "Half-past five, then," she murmured. On her way to the schoolroom she caught up a book with the air of one who finds at last a boon long sought.

Sir William was inclined to be facetious over "catching you and the Incomparable One. I've always known the day would come...."

Instead of tackling the letters, he went on with his absurd chaffing.

"The fact is," Napier said, when he had shut the library door, "I've been wanting to say a word about this lady."

"What's up?" Sir William was still smiling roguishly.

"I'm thinking of the matter of the translation. Surely an official document of that description ought not to be in chance hands."

What did he mean? It hadn't been in chance hands.

It had been in the hands of Miss von Schwarzenberg. And Miss von Schwarzenberg, Napier reminded his chief, was an outsider. Or, if not that (hastily he readjusted himself to the McIntyre view) she was at all events outside the official circle.

"My dear boy, of course she is. She is a woman. And beyond knowing an English equivalent for a German word, she understands as much about the bearing of a paper on International Commerce—as much as that Aberdeen terrier."

"I think, sir, you underrate Miss von Schwarzenberg's intelligence."

"Or maybe you," said Sir William, wrinkling his little nose with silent laughter, "maybe you underrate the Aberdeen's."

Miss Greta did not produce her friend at tea time. "Nan doesn't care about tea. Americans don't, you know. She will meet us at the links."

And it so fell out.

If Miss Ellis didn't "take to" tea, she "took to" golf "as if she'd been a born Scot," according to Julian. Why on earth Miss von Schwarzenberg should want to go on trying when the power to hit a ball was so obviously not among her many gifts, passed Napier's understanding. It struck him as rather nice of her that she wasn't the least disturbed by Nan's swinging efficiency. Was that because it got rid of her?—put wide stretches of sand and gorse between the ill-matched couples? Napier would hardly have stood it so amiably but for Julian's disarming frankness as to the satisfaction he, at all events, was deriving from the arrangement.

And Nan—planted high above a bunker, hair rather wild, face sparkling with zest for the game, or for the company, or for that she was Nan Ellis.

"Look at her!" Julian said, on a note so new in Napier's experience of him that he stood silent a moment, looking, not at the girl, but at his friend.

Napier was still in the phase of being immensely diverted at the spiffing progress of old Julian's flirtation—so much better for him than addling his brains over that scheme of internationalism that was going to save the world.

"Look at her," Julian repeated, "did you ever see anybody so, so ... God's-in-His-Heaven,-all's-well-with-the-world!"

"Look here, Julian, I hope you're not...."

"Well, do you know, I'm afraid I am," said his friend. "I don't really quite understand what it is that's happened. But something has."

With that childlike directness that was part of Julian's charm for the more complex mind, he turned to Napier just before the von Schwarzenberg came within earshot. "There's a fly in the precious ointment," he said. "This rot about her going to London. Look here, Napier, the von Schwarzenberg woman would do anything for you. Make her leave the girl in peace here."

"Impossible!" Napier said with decision. "How could I ask such a thing, you unpractical being!"

"That woman" was too near now for more, and Julian sheered off toward the figure on the sky-line.

On the way back to the hall, Miss von Schwarzenberg talked more intimately than ever she had to Napier. She told him about her home in Hanover. About her childhood. Her "years of exile." So she spoke of America. She had a story of how an odious Chicago millionaire had wanted to marry her.

"But why do I tell you all this?"

Napier too had been wondering.

"It must be," she went on, "because you are a little less 'remote' this evening, and I am suffering from Heimweh."

In a sturdy, practical tone Napier advised her not to give way to that! In order to divert her thoughts, "What do you think of ..."—he nodded to the two on in front.

"Of what?" said Miss von Schwarzenberg, dreamily.

"Well, aren't you chaperoning your friend?"

"Chaperoning!" She came to, suddenly. Plainly she hadn't liked the word. "We are too near of an age for chaperoning."

"It's not a question of age, is it?"—Napier extricated himself quickly. "But perhaps it's only that I don't understand. I never can be quite sure about Americans."

"Exactly my feeling," Miss von Schwarzenberg struck in. "They are so old ... and yet so passionate. Oh, there's more than three thousand miles of salt water between us of the Old World and the people of the New. They're a new kind of humanity."

They found Nan and Julian alone in the hall. As Napier stopped to unshoulder the golf