tween him and such freedoms, such innocent securities. "It 's pathetic, a person like that. Think of the knocks she 'll get! Think-”

"What I'm thinking of-I can't get it out of my mind, every time I go back to it; it seems to me stranger-the expression on the Schwarzenberg's face when the girl recognized Pforzheim." "What sort of expression?" said Julian, absently.

"Hard to describe. And the way she looked after Carl with a sort of cowering apology before she plunged into the car. Now leave off quarreling with me about the Mercury cap, and just tell me. Why the devil should that woman have pretended she 'd never seen the Pforzheims before she met them here?"

"How do you know she pretended?" "I was there. I saw them introduced."

Τ

T

CHAPTER III

HAT hall at Kirklamont, scene of so much of the McIntyre family life, was for Gavan Napier, as he looked back, forever associated with the most decisive hours in his own fate, as well as that of his closest friend. It meant to him, perhaps more than anything, the abiding memory of that morning after his discovery of the carefully concealed previous acquaintance between Miss von Schwarzenberg and the Pforzheims. He stood in front of the fireplace looking again at the "Times" of the previous day while he waited for Andrews to bring in the post-bag.

At that particular moment there was n't anybody else in the hall. There probably soon would be somebody, Napier reflected with a mingled sense of amusement and uneasiness. For this was about the time Miss von Schwarzenberg was astute enough to choose for her little tête-à-têtes with the private secretary, always elaborately accidental. Sir William, as all the household knew, would, whatever the weather, be out riding; Lady McIntyre dawdling over her late breakfast; and Madge in the school-room, as

Napier could all too plainly hear, practising with that new ruthlessness introduced by Miss von Schwarzenberg.

So the coast would be clear.

Miss Greta was never so at a loss as to enter without her little excuse: "I think I must have left my knitting," or, "Lady McIntyre has been asking where that novel" Or, most favorite device of all, because it could be made part of an accepted routine, she would go to where the writing-materials lay on the big table and carefully review the stock. From a stone bottle or basket on her arm she would produce a fresh supply of anything that might be lacking. She had particularly nice taste in the matter of fresh ink and clean receptacles. Sir William had been heard to declare there had never been such a thing as a decent pen in the hall till Miss von Schwarzenberg came here.

If she wanted to stay longer than she usually ventured, Whitaker or Bradshaw were her allies. There was always a semblance of reasonableness in such preoccupation. For Lady McIntyre had fallen into the habit of going to Miss Greta for every sort of service, from somebody's official style and title to looking up trains for expected guests, or for those little family expeditions and picnics which Madge was supposed to be bent on.

Well, it was n't the first by several score of time that, without any encouragement from him, young ladies had shown themselves fertile in pretexts for a little conversation with Mr. Napier. He himself was not in the least averse, as a rule, to a little harmless flirtation even with a governess. But suppose this particular young woman should, with the fatal German sentimentality, be falling really in love. You never knew what might happen. One day as he was sorting the letters she had stood at the table beside him, turning the leaves of Bradshaw with piteous aimlessness. It was out of the merest common humanity, he told himself, that he suggested: "Shall I look it up for you? Where do you want to go?" With a heave of her high bosom she

had answered that some times she thought the place she 'd best go to was the bottom of Kirklamont loch. Only the timely entrance of a servant with a telegram had, Napier felt, saved him from a most inconvenient scene. He reflected anxiously upon the high rate of suicide in Germany. It would be very awful if for the sake of his beaux yeux Miss Greta should find a watery grave.

He looked at the clock. If the post was late, so was Miss von Schwarzenberg.

Suddenly it came over Napier that she timed these entrances of hers not according to the clock and not according to his own movements. He was sometimes twenty minutes waiting there alone for the post to come in.

"God bless my soul!" he ejaculated mentally. Did n't she time her entrances invariably to about two minutes before Andrews brought in the bag? And how did she manage that if not by the luck of having a room which looked out on the inner court of Kirklamont? From her window Miss von Schwarzenberg could see the arrival of the post at the back entrance of the hall.

Before Napier had time to readjust himself to this new view of the lady's apparent interest in him, there she was, in her very feminine, rather Londony clothes, her intensely white, plump neck. rising out of a lace blouse; her yellow hair bound in smooth braids round her head; a light dust of pearl powder over her pink cheeks. She looked like a girl on a Berlin chocolate box. No, she did n't, not to-day. There was too much purpose this morning, too much gravity in the handsome face, and no beating about. the bush with knitting or stationery or Bradshaw.

She came straight over to the fireplace. "Mr. Napier, I should like to speak to you a moment."

Napier lowered his newspaper. "Yes, Miss von Schwarzenberg." "I don't know if you gathered yesterday, or whether you are ever likely to hear, that the Pforzheims are old friends of my family."

"Oh?" said Napier and then paused. "And, anyway, I 've been feeling for some time I'd like you to know."

Napier folded up the newspaper without

comment.

"Their father and my father," she said in that heroine of melodrama style she sometimes affected, "were brothers-inarms. They have been close friends since their university days."

"Really?" Napier's calm seemed to detract from her own.

The color surged into her round cheeks, but she held her head dauntlessly on its short, white neck as she confessed:

"Carl and Ernst have known me since I was a child."

Something inside Napier's mind said, "Ah, ha!" but it came out in the form of an almost indifferent "Indeed."

"I suppose," she challenged him, "you think, that being the case, it was very odd we should meet like strangers?"

"Oh, I dare say you had your reasons, he said as Andrews came in. Napier walked the length of the hall to where the man had put the bag down on the big table in front of the cloak-room.

Miss von Schwarzenberg did not move till Andrews had gone out. She did not move even then until Napier, of set purpose a long time in finding his keys and a long time in selecting his duplicate and fitting it to the lock, at last threw back the leather flap and drew out the letters.

That instant, as though she had only just resumed control of her self-possession, Miss von Schwarzenberg, handkerchief in hand, moved softly down the hall and stood at Napier's side. It came over him that this was n't the first time, or yet the second, that she had executed this simple manoeuver, if manoeuver it was. He knew now that he had been imputing to his own attractiveness her invariable drawing near while he transacted his business with the letter-bag. The little pause before Andrews left the room he had set down as a concession to the proprieties. More than ever, so he had read her, if she laid traps for little talks with the private secretary, was it important that

the servants should not be set gossiping. But now, with an inward jolt, he asked, Had he been making an ass of himself? His hand, already inserted a second time to draw out more letters, came forth empty. He noticed that her eyes were on it as he turned the palm of his hand toward him, fingers doubled and nails in a line. He studied them.

She studied the letters already lying in an unsorted heap. They seemed not to interest. She pressed her handkerchief to her lips and raised her eyes.

"I would have told you before, only only"-her beautiful mouth quivered, and her eyes fell again-"you are difficult to talk to."

"Am I?" said Napier in a tone of polite surprise, still studying his nails. "For me, yes. You make it difficult. Why do you, Mr. Napier?"

That man must have a heart of stone to resist an appeal so voiced.

"Perhaps you imagine it," he said, taking refuge in pulling out the rest of the letters and sorting them into piles.

She stood as though too discouraged to continue, too listless to go away. But when in the midst of his sorting Napier glanced at her, he discovered no listlessness in the eyes that kept tally of the letters he was dealing out. "What earthly good does it do her to read the outsides of our envelops?" he wondered.

"I've been unhappy," she went on, "most unhappy under my enforced silence. I've wanted so much that you, anyhow, should know the truth."

"I don't know why I especially—” he began.

"No! no! no!" she said a little wildly, despite the hushed softness of her tone; "you don't know. And it's a good thing -a good thing you don't. But I'm too unhappy under the innocent little deceit that 's been forced on me. There must be an end of it. We had quarreled, the Pforzheims and I. That is, they quarreled. Each wanted to marry me. Oh, it was dreadful! More devoted to each other than any brothers I 've ever known. They wanted to fight a duel about it."

"About" Napier laid a long official envelop on the top of Sir William's pile.

"About me," she said, with lowered eyes. "That was why I went to America. I could n't bear it. I said, 'We are strangers from this day.' And so-" she pressed her handkerchief again to her lips -"and so we met like that."

"Their aunt did n't let you know they were here, then?"

"Not a word. Oh, they no doubt told her not to; for of course I would never have come if I'd known. Never in this world!"

"Well, we must admit they behave well in the circumstances."

"I've seen to that," she said with great firmness. "I threatened them. I would n't stay here an hour, I said, if they swerved a hair's-breadth from the rôle of strangers. Now"-her voice altered suddenly as though out of weariness after immense effort-"now you know."

Napier took out the last letters. "I expect," he said kindly, "it's been hard enough for you-at times."

"The strain is frightful." She swallowed and began again, "I-maybe you 've noticed-they will write to me from time to time."

She waited. Napier's face was as blank as the new sheet of blotting-paper in front of the great presentation inkstand.

"Well, is it my fault?" she demanded. "I've tried to make them see what an equivocal position it puts me in, how unfair-" Her face yearned for sympathy.

Napier went on with his sorting.

"It 's too nerve-racking," she said, with increasing agitation. "Carl does n't know about Ernst's letters, and Ernst does n't know about Carl's. Each one thinks the other has got over that old madness. But the letters they write me! Frantic!" She came closer still. She laid her hand on Napier's sleeve. "Do you know, sometimes I 'm afraid-" She stopped as a step sounded on the gravel.

"The Pforzheims!" Napier said to himself, interpreting, as he thought, the look on the face she had turned sharply to the

door in the act of withdrawing from his side.

But a very different apparition stood there, the girl in the Mercury cap, not so blithe as the day before; eager still, but wistful.

"Why, my dear Nan!" Miss von Schwarzenberg said again, precisely as she had before. "I told you I would come for you."

"Yes, 'in the afternoon,' you said. But I could n't wait. Don't look like that, dearest." She had lowered her voice as Miss von Schwarzenberg joined her in the lobby. "I began to be afraid I'd only dreamed that you were so near again. And then I remembered things you said to me last night-"

Miss von Schwarzenberg answered in a voice lower still, so low that Napier heard nothing. He gathered up Sir William's letters and his own. As he went with them into the library, Miss von Schwarzenberg turned hastily. "I'll just go and see if Lady McIntyre can spare me for two minutes. I'll meet you out there by the clump of firs."

"All right," the girl said quietly and turned away.

Miss von Schwarzenberg knew as well as Napier did that Lady McIntyre was in the breakfast-room looking at the illustrated papers over her second cup of coffee. But Miss von Schwarzenberg hurried up-stairs.

Ordinarily Napier would have sat reading and answering his own letters till what time Sir William should come in from his ride. To-day he stood by the library fire "doing just nothing at all," he would have said. In reality he was looking still at the face of the girl. What had the Schwarzenberg been saying to her? It was n't at all the face she had brought here the evening before. And if Julian Grant had been struck by the happy faith in its yesterday aspect, Napier, though he would have ridiculed the idea, found something rather touching in the hurt steadfastness it showed to-day. Not a hint of reproach; she had smiled at her friend. "But it is n't the

same face," Napier repeated to himself; and before he had at all made up his mind what he would do next, he was going through the hall on his way out. His walk might have carried him past the firs but for the fact that it ended abruptly in the hall.

She was there, pulling off her gloves and holding her hands over the fire.

"It is cold," Napier said, and he seized the poker. The flames sprang up and danced on the girl's face.

"Oh, my! how nice!" Her smile was not so chastened but that it showed the white, even teeth, the two canines as pointed as a hound's. "You are the private secretary, are n't you?"

"What makes you think that?" he asked, a little on his dignity.

"Well, the other one was 'Julian,' was n't he?"

Napier did n't much like this familiarity with a Christian name on the part of a stranger, though on the girl's lips "Julian" sounded, what she afterward proclaimed it, "one of the most beautiful names in the world." There were others -not that Napier for a moment wished the habit to spread-which might sound rather agreeable, too, uttered in the same

way.

"I'm not Julian. I am Gavan Napier." "I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Napier." She held out her hand. It was still cold, and not like the hand of a grown person, to Napier's sense. Like a child's. She looked at him inquiringly. He said nothing, only glanced round the hall in an undecided fashion after releasing her hand, and then put his letters down on the nearest chair. "I hope I 'm not in your way," the girl said. As still he did not instantly answer, she added: "You must tell me, please. You see, I don't know at all what private secretaries do. You are the first one I ever met."

He laughed, and said they were a good deal like other people so far as he 'd observed, and did n't do anything in particular.

Miss Ellis declared she knew better than that.