I caught, "Why not? Between such old friends."
However, she waved away the hand-bag, he calmed down, and their voices
sank again. Presently I saw him raise her hand to his lips, while with
her back to the room she continued to contemplate out of the window the
bare and untidy garden. At last he went out of the room, throwing to the
table an airy "_Bonjour, bonjour_," which was not acknowledged by any of
us three.

CHAPTER III

Mills got up and approached the figure at the window. To my extreme
surprise, Mr. Blunt, after a moment of obviously painful hesitation,
hastened out after the man with the white hair.

In consequence of these movements I was left to myself and I began to be
uncomfortably conscious of it when Dona Rita, near the window, addressed
me in a raised voice.

"We have no confidences to exchange, Mr. Mills and I."

I took this for an encouragement to join them. They were both looking at
me. Dona Rita added, "Mr. Mills and I are friends from old times, you
know."

Bathed in the softened reflection of the sunshine, which did not fall
directly into the room, standing very straight with her arms down, before
Mills, and with a faint smile directed to me, she looked extremely young,
and yet mature. There was even, for a moment, a slight dimple in her
cheek.

"How old, I wonder?" I said, with an answering smile.

"Oh, for ages, for ages," she exclaimed hastily, frowning a little, then
she went on addressing herself to Mills, apparently in continuation of
what she was saying before.

. . . "This man's is an extreme case, and yet perhaps it isn't the
worst. But that's the sort of thing. I have no account to render to
anybody, but I don't want to be dragged along all the gutters where that
man picks up his living."

She had thrown her head back a little but there was no scorn, no angry
flash under the dark-lashed eyelids. The words did not ring. I was
struck for the first time by the even, mysterious quality of her voice.

"Will you let me suggest," said Mills, with a grave, kindly face, "that
being what you are, you have nothing to fear?"

"And perhaps nothing to lose," she went on without bitterness. "No. It
isn't fear. It's a sort of dread. You must remember that no nun could
have had a more protected life. Henry Allegre had his greatness. When
he faced the world he also masked it. He was big enough for that. He
filled the whole field of vision for me."

"You found that