"He and I don't
seem to get on at all with our fellow-guests, as Mrs. White calls
them. You really ought not to stay here and talk to us. It is a most
inauspicious start for you."

"Dear me," Anna laughed, "how unfortunate! What ought I to do? Should
I be forgiven, do you think, if I were to go and hold that skein of
wool for the old lady in the yellow cap?"

"Don't speak of her irreverently," Brendon said, in an awed whisper.
"Her husband was a county councillor, and she has a niece who comes to
see her in a carriage. I wish she wouldn't look like that at us over
her glasses."

Horace, the manservant, transformed now into the semblance of a
correctly garbed waiter, threw open the door.

"Dinner is served, ma'am," he announced to Mrs. White.

There was no rush. Everything was done in a genteel and ordinary way,
but on the other hand, there was no lingering. Anna found herself next
Sydney Courtlaw, with his friend close at hand. Opposite to her was a
sallow-visaged young man, whose small tie seemed like a smudge of
obtusively shiny black across the front of a high close-drawn collar.
As a rule, Courtlaw told her softly, he talked right and left, and to
everybody throughout the whole of the meal--to-night he was almost
silent, and seemed to devote his whole attention to staring at Anna.
After the first courses however she scarcely noticed him. Her two new
friends did their best to entertain her.

"I can't imagine, Miss Pellissier," Brendon said, leaning towards her,
"whatever made you think of coming to stay if only for a week at a
Montague Street boarding-house. Are you going to write a novel?"

"Not I," she answered gaily. "I came to London unexpectedly, and my
friends could not take me in. I had a vague sort of idea that this was
the region where one finds apartments, so I told my cabman to drive in
this direction while I sat inside his vehicle and endeavoured to form
a plan of campaign. He brought me past this house, and I thought I
would call and leave your brother's letter. Then I saw Mrs. White----"

"No more," Sydney Courtlaw begged, laughingly. "You were booked of
course. An unexpected vacancy, wasn't it? Every one comes in on
unexpected vacancy."

"And they go?"

"When they get the chance. It really isn't so easy to go as it seems.
We have come to the conclusion, Brendon and I, that Mrs. White is
psychologically gifted. She throws a sort of spell over us all. We
struggle against it at first, but in