arched in vain. I tried the country house in
which he and I had spent a good many of our vacations. Suddenly I
remembered the reading-party in Devonshire--but no, she was dark. Once
Jack and I had a romantic adventure in Glencoe in which a lady and her
daughter were concerned. We tried to make the most of it; but in our
hearts we knew, after we had seen her by the morning light, that the
daughter was not beautiful. Then there was the French girl at Algiers.
Jack had kept me hanging on in Algiers a week longer than we meant to
stay. The pose of the head, the hands clasped behind it, a trick so
irritatingly familiar to me--was that the French girl? No, the lady
I was struggling to identify was certainly English. I'm sure you're
asleep.

"A month elapsed before I had an opportunity of seeing the photograph
again. An idea had struck me which I meant to carry out. This was to
trace the photograph by means of the photographer. I did not like,
however, to mention the subject to Colonel Goring again, so I contrived
to find the album while he was out of the smoking-room. The number of
the photograph and the address of the photographer were all I wanted;
but just as I had got the photograph out of the album my host returned.
I slipped the thing quickly into my pocket, and he gave me no chance
of replacing it. Thus it was owing to an accident that I carried
the photograph away. My theft rendered me no assistance. True, the
photographer's name and address were there; but when I went to the place
mentioned it had disappeared to make way for 'residential chambers.' I
have a few other Cambridge friends here, and I showed some of these the
photograph. One, I am now aware, is under the impression that I am to be
married soon, but the others were rational. Grierson, of the War Office,
recognized the portrait at once. 'She is playing small parts at the
Criterion,' he said. Finchley, who is a promising man at the bar, also
recognized her. 'Her portraits were in all the illustrated papers five
years ago,' he told me, 'at the time when she got twelve months.' They
contradicted each other about her, however, and I satisfied myself that
she was neither an actress at the Criterion nor the adventuress of 1883.
It was, of course, conceivable that she was an actress, but if so her
face was not known in the fancy stationers' windows. Are you listening?

"I saw that the mystery would remain unsolved until Jack's return home;
and when I had a letter