of a music hall unescorted if she had been what is conventionally
termed respectable. Yet somehow he wanted to forget the fact and treat
her with the respect he would have paid to any ordinary acquaintance in
his own social sphere.

This feeling was probably due both to an innate chivalry and to the fact
that one of his father's favourite precepts was, "My boy, whatever
company you're in, never forget that you're a gentleman." Mingled with
it there may also have been a dash of masculine vanity. The more he
looked at the girl the more striking did her likeness to himself appear.
Really, if he had had a sister she could not have been more like him,
but he knew that he was an only child, and, besides, that thought was
altogether unthinkable.

After a little pause, during which their eyes met and their cheeks
flushed in a somewhat boy-and-girlish fashion, he laughed a trifle
awkwardly and said:

"Well, then, we shall have to introduce ourselves, I suppose. My name is
Maxwell--Vane Maxwell."

"Vane!" she echoed, "how funny! My name is Vane too--Carol Vane. It's
not a sham one either, such as a lot of girls like me take. It's my
own--at least, I have always been called Carol, and Vane was my mother's
name."

"I see," said Maxwell, after another little pause, during which the
oysters came and the waiter opened the wine. When he had filled the two
glasses and vanished, Maxwell lifted his and said:

"Well, Miss Carol, it is rather curious that we should both have the
same names, and also, if I may say so without flattering myself too much,
be so much like each other. At any rate I shall venture to hope that
your little accident at the Palace has enabled me to make a very
charming acquaintance."

"That's very prettily put, Mr. Vane Maxwell," she said, nodding and
smiling at him over her glass. "And now that we've been introduced in a
sort of way, as we haven't got any more interesting subject to talk
about, suppose we talk about ourselves. Which are you, Oxford or
Cambridge?"

The conversation thus started rattled merrily along for over an hour.
Without thinking any disloyalty to his own Enid, who was now a fair and
stately maiden of eighteen, he found it quite impossible to resist the
strange charm of Miss Carol's manner. She was obviously a lady by
instinct, and she had also been educated after a sort. She had read
widely if not altogether wisely, and she seemed just as familiar with
the literature, or, at any rate,