eman from Lausanne, and, handing his bag to a
porter, made his way to the hotel omnibus. He looked at his watch. It
pointed to a quarter to four, and May was not due to arrive until half
past. He went to his hotel, washed and changed and came down to the
vestibule to inquire if the instructions he had telegraphed had been
carried out.

May was arriving in company with Saul Arthur Mann, who was taking one of
his rare holidays abroad. Frank had only seen the girl once since the
day of the trial. He had come to breakfast on the following morning, and
very little had been said. He was due to leave that afternoon for the
Continent. He had a little money, sufficient for his needs, and Jasper
Cole had offered no suggestion that he would dispute the will, in so far
as it affected Frank. So he had gone abroad and had idled away two
months in France, Spain, and Italy, and had then made his leisurely way
back to Switzerland by way of Maggiore.

He had grown a little graver, was a little more set in his movements,
but he bore upon his face no mark to indicate the mental agony through
which he must have passed in that long-drawn-out and wearisome trial. So
thought the girl as she came through the swing doors of the hotel,
passed the obsequious hotel servants, and greeted him in the big palm
court.

If she saw any change in him he remarked a development in her which was
a little short of wonderful. She was at that age when the woman is
breaking through the beautiful chrysalis of girlhood. In those two
months a remarkable change had come over her, a change which he could
not for the moment define, for this phenomenon of development had been
denied to his experience.

"Why, May," he said, "you are quite old."

She laughed, and again he noticed the change. The laugh was richer,
sweeter, purer than the bubbling treble he had known.

"You are not getting complimentary, are you?" she asked.

She was exquisitely dressed, and had that poise which few Englishwomen
achieve. She had the art of wearing clothes, and from the flimsy crest
of her toque to the tips of her little feet she was all that the most
exacting critic could desire. There are well-dressed women who are no
more than mannequins. There are fine ladies who cannot be mistaken for
anything but fine ladies, whose dresses are a horror and an abomination
and whose expressed tastes are execrable.

May Nuttall was a fine lady, finely appareled.

"When you have finished admirin