eturned. She was wearing a rose-colored tea-gown,
and once more John caught a glimpse of something in her eyes, as she
looked at him, which puzzled him.

"I am a little gaudy, I am afraid," she laughed, as she took a cue from
the rack, "but so comfortable! How many will you give me in a hundred?"

"I have never seen you play," John reminded her. "I am not much good
myself."

They played two games, and John had hard work to escape defeat. As they
were commencing the third, the butler entered the room, bearing a
telegram. Lady Hilda took it from the salver, glanced at it, and threw
it into the fire.

"What a nuisance!" she exclaimed. "The Daunceys can't come."

John, who was enjoying himself very much, murmured only a word or two of
polite regret. He had never got over his distaste for meeting strangers.

"Can't be helped, I suppose," Lady Hilda remarked. "There is nothing
from Flo Henderson yet. We'll have one more game, and then I'll ring her
up."

They played another game of billiards, and sat by the fire for a little
while. The silence outside, and the air of repose about the place, were
delightful to John after several months of London.

"I wonder you ever leave here," he said.

She laughed softly.

"You forget that I am a lone woman. Solitude, as our dear friend wrote
in her last novel, is a paradise for two, but is an irritant for one."

There was a short silence. For the first time since his arrival John's
tranquillity was a little disturbed. There was something almost pathetic
in the expression which had flashed for a moment over his hostess's
face. Was she really lonely, he wondered? Perhaps she had some sort of
unhappy love history underneath her rather hard exterior. He was
disposed just then to judge the whole world charitably, and he had never
believed the stories which people were so anxious to tell of her. He
felt no desire to pursue the subject.

"I have never read any of Mrs. Henderson's books," he remarked.

She stretched out an arm, took a volume from the swinging table by her
side, and threw it across to him.

"You can glance through that while you dress," she said.

A gong rang through the house a few moments later, and the butler
brought in two cocktails on a little silver tray.

"We are having quite a solitude _a deux_, aren't we?" Lady Hilda
remarked, as she raised her glass. "I'll go and ring up Flo on my way
up-stairs."

They parted a few minutes later, and John went up to h