he work is very absorbing and
sheer delight. You were talking of going abroad again. Are you still
thinking of it?"

"I was hoping to get away. I wanted Aunt Susan to come with me to the
Riviera, but she flatly refuses to leave home at present, so I'm
afraid that's off."

"Well, now, that's curious. I've been feeling something of an
inclination that way myself," said Lady Elspeth. "I wonder if you'd
feel like coming with me, Margaret. I don't believe we would quarrel."

"Oh, I would be delighted, dear Lady Elspeth, and I'll promise not to
quarrel whatever you do to me."

"Who ever heard of sunbeams quarrelling?" said Graeme gaily, with Lady
Elspeth's earlier suggestion to himself dancing in his brain. "But
think of London left utterly sunless."

"London will never miss us," said Margaret. "It still has bridge, and
we are neither of us players."

And then, having an appointment from which he could not escape, and
knowing that they always enjoyed a little personal chat, he
reluctantly took his leave, and left them to the discussion of their
new plans.

III

He had met Margaret Brandt for the first time at a Ladies' Banquet of
the Whitefriars Club.

Providence,--I insist upon this. No mere chance set them next to one
another at that hospitable board,--Providence, forecasting the future,
placed them side by side, and he was introduced to her by his good
friend Adam Black, who had the privilege of her acquaintance and sat
opposite enjoying them greatly.

For they were both eminently good to look upon;--Margaret, tall and
slender, and of a most gracious figure and bearing, with thoughtful,
dark-blue eyes, a very charming face accentuated by the
characteristics of her northern descent, and a wealth of shining brown
hair coiled about her shapely head;--Graeme, tall, clean-built, of an
outdoor complexion, with nothing of the student about him save his
deep, reflective eyes, and the little lines in the corners which
wrinkled up so readily at the overflowing humours of life.

It was Charles Pixley--Charles Svendt Pixley, to accord him fullest
justice, which I am most anxious to do--who brought her, and to that
extent we are his debtors.

Though why Pixley should be a Whitefriar passes one's comprehension.
His pretensions to literature were, I should say, bounded by his Stock
Exchange notebook and his betting-book. He had not even read Graeme's
latest, though it was genuinely in its second--somewhat
limited--edi