es and shook hands.

"How did you guess that?" he asked.

"From the illustrated papers, of course," she answered. "I have come to
the conclusion that you must be a very vain man, I have seen so many
pictures of you lately."

"A matter of snapshots," he replied, "for which, as a rule, the victim
is not responsible. You should abjure such a journalistic vice as
picture papers."

"Why?" she laughed. "They lead to such pleasant surprises. I had been
led to believe, for instance, by studying the Daily Mirror, that you
were quite an elderly person with a squint."

"I am becoming self-conscious," he confessed. "Won't you come in?
There is a boy somewhere about the premises who can look after your
horse, and I shall be able to give you some tea as soon as Robert gets
back with the milk."

He cooeed to the boy, who came up from one of the lower shelves of
garden, and she followed him into the hall. He looked around him for a
moment in some perplexity.

"I wonder whether you would mind coming into my study?" he suggested.
"I am here quite alone for the present, and it is the only room I use."

She followed him down a long passage into a small apartment at the
extreme end of the house.

"You are like me," she said. "I keep most of my rooms shut up and live
in my den. A lonely person needs so much atmosphere."

"Rather a pigsty, isn't it?" he remarked, sweeping a heap of books from
a chair. "I am without a secretary just now--in fact," he went on, with
a little burst of confidence engendered by her friendly attitude, "we
are in a mess altogether."

She laughed softly, leaning back amongst the cushions of the chair and
looking around the room, her kindly eyes filled with interest.

"It is a most characteristic mess," she declared. "I am sure an
interviewer would give anything for this glimpse into your tastes and
habits. Golf clubs, all cleaned up and ready for action; trout rod,
newly-waxed at the joints--you must try my stream, there is no water in
yours; tennis racquets in a very excellent press--I wonder whether
you're too good for a single with me some day? Typewriter--rather
dusty. I don't believe that you can use it."

"I can't," he admitted. "I have been writing my letters by hand for the
last two days."

She sighed.

"Men are helpless creatures! Fancy a great politician unable to write
his own letters! What has become of your secretary?"

Tallente threw some books to the floor and seated himself in the