lagio, or other of
the many lake-side resorts, for here along the sheltered banks grew
all the luxuriant vegetation of the Riviera--the camellias, magnolias,
aloes and palms.

I had been there ten days or so when, one evening at dinner in the
long restaurant which overlooked the lake, there came to the small
table opposite mine a tall, fair-haired girl with great blue eyes,
dressed elegantly but quietly in black chiffon, with a band of pale
pink velvet twisted in her hair.

She glanced at me quickly as she drew aside her skirt and took her
seat opposite her companion, a rather stout, dark, bald-headed man,
red-faced and well-dressed, whose air was distinctly paternal as he
bent and handed the menu across to her.

The man turned and glanced sharply around. By his well-cut
dinner-coat, the way his dress-shirt fitted, and his refinement of
manner, I at once put him down as a gentleman, and her father.

I instantly decided, on account of their smartness of dress, that they
were not English. Indeed, the man addressed her in French, to which
she responded. Her coiffure was in the latest mode of Paris, her gown
showed unmistakably the hand of the French dressmaker, while her
elegance was essentially that of the Parisienne. There is always a
something--something indescribable--about the Frenchwoman which is
marked and distinctive, and which the English-bred woman can never
actually imitate.

Not that I like Frenchwomen. Far from it. They are too vain and
shallow, too fond of gaiety and flattery to suit my taste. No; among
all the many women I have met I have never found any to compare with
those of my own people.

I don't know why I watched the new-comers so intently. Perhaps it was
on account of the deliberate and careful manner in which the man
selected his dinner, his instructions to the _maitre d'hotel_ as to
the manner the entree was to be made, and the infinite pains he took
over the exact vintage he required. He spoke in French, fluent and
exact, and his manner was entirely that of the epicure.

Or was it because of that girl?--the girl with eyes of that deep,
fathomless blue, the wonderful blue of the lake as it lay in the
sunlight--the lake that was nearly a mile in depth. In her face I
detected a strange, almost wistful look, an expression which showed
that her thoughts were far away from the laughter and chatter of that
gay restaurant. She looked at me without seeing me; she spoke to her
father without know