fashionable dress and by the drooping feathers of her Paris hat, in
which the sharp olive-skinned face with its magnificent eyes was
picturesquely framed. The girl gave way unwillingly, showed Mrs. Floyd
into a small study looking on the front garden, and left her.

* * * * *

"Elsie!" cried Herbert French, springing from the low chair in which he
had been lounging in his shirt-sleeves with a book when the parlour-maid
found him, "Elsie!"

His wife, who was at the other end of the lawn, playing with the
children, the boy on her back and a pair of girl twins clinging to her
skirts, turned in astonishment and hurried back to him.

"Mrs. Floyd?" They both looked at the card in bewilderment. "Who is it?
Mrs. Floyd?"

Then French's face changed.

"What is this lady like?" he asked peremptorily of the parlour-maid.

"Well, sir, she's a dark lady, dressed very smart----"

"Has she very black eyes?"

"Oh yes, sir!"

"Young?"

The girl promptly replied in the negative, qualifying it a moment
afterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't say so, sir."

French thought a moment.

"Thank you. I will come in."

He turned to his wife with a rapid question, under his breath. "Where is
Roger?"

Elsie stared at him, her colour paling.

"Herbert!--it can't--it can't----"

"I suspect it is--Mrs. Barnes," said French slowly. "Help me on with my
coat, darling. Now then, what shall we do?"

"She can't have come to force herself on him!" cried his wife
passionately.

"Probably she knows nothing of his being here. Did he go for a walk?"

"Yes, towards Sandown. But he will be back directly."

A quick shade of expression crossed French's face, which his wife knew
to mean that whenever Roger was out by himself there was cause for
anxiety. But the familiar trouble was immediately swallowed up in the
new and pressing one.

"What can that woman have come to say?" he asked, half of himself, half
of his wife, as he walked slowly back to the house. Elsie had conveyed
the children to their nurse, and was beside him.

"Perhaps she repents!" The tone was dry and short; it flung a challenge
to misdoing.

"I doubt it! But Roger?" French stood still, pondering. "Keep him,
darling--intercept him if you can. If he must see her, I will come out.
But we mustn't risk a shock."

They consulted a little in low voices. Then French went into the house
and Elsie came back to her children. She stood thinki