n this work but in account keeping and all the duties of a
secretary, must have required a steady professional training.

Could she have studied in Museums?

But the war has been on for four years and I had gathered that she has
been in Paris all that time--Even if she had left England in 1914, she
could only have been eighteen or nineteen then, and girls of that age do
not generally take an interest in furniture. This thought kept bothering
me--and I was silent for some moments. I was weighing things up.

Her voice interrupted my thoughts.

"The Braxted chair has the first of the knotted fringes known"--it was
saying.

I had spoken of the Braxted chair--but had not recorded this fact--.

How the devil could she have known about it?

"Where did you find that?"

"I knew someone who had seen it--" she answered in the same voice, but
her cheeks grew pinker--.

"You have never seen it yourself?"

"No--I have never been in England--."

"----Never been in England?"

I was stupefied.

She went on hurriedly--I was going to write feverishly,--so quickly did
she rush into questions of method in arranging the chapters, her armour
was on again--she had become cautious, and was probably annoyed with
herself for ever having allowed herself to slip off her guard.

I knew that I could disconcert her, and probably obtain some interesting
admissions from her--and have a thrilling fencing match, but some
instinct warned me not to do so--I might win out for the time being, but
if she has a secret which she does not wish me to discover, she will
take care not again to put herself in a situation where this can happen.
I have the apprehension always hanging, like Damocles' sword, over my
head, of her relinquishing her post. Besides, why should I trouble her
for my own satisfaction?--However, I registered a vow then that I would
find out all I could from Maurice.

The inference of everything she says, does and unconsciously infers, is
that she is a cultivated lady, accustomed to talking with people of our
world--people who know England and its great houses well enough to have
made her familiar with the knowledge of where certain pieces of famous
furniture are.--The very phrasing of her sentences is the phrasing of
our Shibboleth, and not the phrasing of the professional classes.

And yet--she is meanly dressed--does housework--and for years must have
been trained in professional business methods. It is profoundly
interestin