.

"You have been introduced?" whispered Mrs. Maitland; and, without
waiting for an answer, she called out merrily: "My dear Irene, you must
positively come and entertain Mr. Carew. He will give up early rising if
he finds that it is always to mean a tete-a-tete with an old woman!"

To my intense astonishment, Miss Latouche replied in the same jesting
tone, and taking the vacant seat next mine began at once to talk in the
most friendly way imaginable. Not a trace of eccentricity was
perceptible in her manner. She was merely a handsome girl, with a strong
vein of originality. I began to doubt the evidence of my senses. Surely
I must have been labouring under some hallucination the previous night.
It was almost easier to believe that I had been the dupe of a portentous
nightmare than that this charming girl should have enacted such a
strange part.

Before the end of breakfast I was certain that I had taken a very
exaggerated view of the situation. It would be a pity to cut short a
pleasant visit and risk offending some of my oldest friends on such
purely fanciful grounds. Besides, I just remembered that I had given my
cook a holiday and that if I went home I should be dependent on the
culinary skill of a charwoman. This last consideration determined me. I
settled to stay.

Nothing in Miss Latouche's behaviour led me to regret my decision. On
the contrary, at the end of a few days we were firm friends. The better
I knew her the greater became my admiration of her beauty and talents;
and, without vanity, I think I may say that she distinctly preferred me
to the other guests, who were mostly very ordinary types of modern young
men. The extraordinary impressions of the first evening had entirely
faded from my mind, when they were suddenly revived in all their
intensity by the following incident.

It was a wet morning and we were all lolling about the billiard-room in
various stages of boredom. Some of the more energetic members of the
party had been out at dawn, cub hunting, and had returned wet through
just as we finished breakfast, in time to add their little quota of
grumbling to the general bulk of discontent. Mrs. Maitland, after making
a fruitless attempt to rally the spirits of the party, gave up the
effort in despair and retired to write letters in her room. Conversation
was carried on in fits and starts, whilst from time to time people
knocked about the billiard balls in a desultory fashion without
exhibiting e