ued in a tone of suppressed indignation: "Until Americans get
used to the fact that France is under water for half the year they're
perpetually risking their lives by not being properly protected. I
suppose you've been tramping through all this nasty clammy mud as if
you'd been taking a stroll on Boston Common."

Darrow, with a laugh, affirmed his previous experience of French
dampness, and the degree to which he was on his guard against it; but
the lady, with a contemptuous snort, rejoined: "You young men are all
alike----"; to which she appended, after another hard look at him:
"I suppose you're George Darrow? I used to know one of your mother's
cousins, who married a Tunstall of Mount Vernon Street. My name is
Adelaide Painter. Have you been in Boston lately? No? I'm sorry for
that. I hear there have been several new houses built at the lower
end of Commonwealth Avenue and I hoped you could tell me about them. I
haven't been there for thirty years myself."

Miss Painter's arrival at Givre produced the same effect as the wind's
hauling around to the north after days of languid weather. When Darrow
joined the group about the tea-table she had already given a tingle to
the air. Madame de Chantelle still remained invisible above stairs;
but Darrow had the impression that even through her drawn curtains and
bolted doors a stimulating whiff must have entered.

Anna was in her usual seat behind the tea-tray, and Sophy Viner
presently led in her pupil. Owen was also there, seated, as usual,
a little apart from the others, and following Miss Painter's massive
movements and equally substantial utterances with a smile of secret
intelligence which gave Darrow the idea of his having been in
clandestine parley with the enemy. Darrow further took note that the
girl and her suitor perceptibly avoided each other; but this might be a
natural result of the tension Miss Painter had been summoned to relieve.

Sophy Viner would evidently permit no recognition of the situation save
that which it lay with Madame de Chantelle to accord; but meanwhile Miss
Painter had proclaimed her tacit sense of it by summoning the girl to a
seat at her side.

Darrow, as he continued to observe the newcomer, who was perched on her
arm-chair like a granite image on the edge of a cliff, was aware
that, in a more detached frame of mind, he would have found an extreme
interest in studying and classifying Miss Painter. It was not that she
said anything rema