"That's where you sit, is n't it," she nodded at the big table,-"writing your despatches? And I suppose everybody goes by on tiptoe, and nobody dares speak to you. Of course I ought n't to be here!" "Oh, yes, you ought."

"No. I ought by rights to be out by the firs. But I was cold, and I did n't see why I should wait out by the firs when there was a fire here doing nobody any good."

She misinterpreted his steady look. "Oh, my! you think I ought to have gone out and waited by the-”

"Nothing of the sort! I should n't have thought half so well of you if you had gone out and waited by the firs."

But the wing-capped head, with its overweight of hair, turned anxiously toward the staircase by which Greta had vanished. "Yes, I see now I ought n't to have stayed in here. That 's one of the things Greta means by 'so very American.'

"American! For the honor of my native land I'll assure you it's every bit as much Scotch. English, too. Any sensible-"

"It is n't German," she said quickly. "I've often heard Greta say, "The great thing is to learn instinctive obedience.'

"But why on earth should you obey Miss von Schwarzenberg?"

"Oh, first of all, because Greta 's the cleverest as well as the most splendid person in the world," she glowed with it, -"and knows more in a minute than I do in a year."

Napier laughed at that reason, so Miss Ellis produced another.

"And, then, you see, ever since I was seventeen I always have obeyed Gretawhen I was good," she threw in quickly, with a self-convicting laugh. “Greta might say-only she 's too kind—that my good days were few and far between."

"How long have you known Miss von Schwarzenberg?"

"Oh, for ages. Ever since I was seventeen."

"That must have been a long time

ago!"

"Well, it is. It 's going on six years." To have held the affection and admiration of a creature like this for six years! "It's long enough to know a person tolerably well," he said reflectively as Miss von Schwarzenberg mounted in his thoughts to a higher plane.

"Yes, if only the time had n't been so broken up," Miss Ellis complained. "How was that?" Napier sat down on the high fender.

"Well, you see, Greta-will it hold me, too?" She looked doubtfully at the brass bar.

"Oh, yes," he reassured her; "it would hold ten of you." His smiling glance took note of the small-boned hands that clutched the brass on each side. From the delicate ankles and the impossible feet up to the slim neck there was n't enough substance in her to furnish forth a good British specimen of half her age. Yet when she stood up she was not only tall; she was almost commanding. That was partly carriage, he decided, and partlywell, what was it?

"The trouble about Greta," she went on, "is that she 's a person everybody is always wanting. Then, added to that, she is the best daughter in the world. Every year she went home for several months. But she always got back in time!" The girl smiled an odd smile, not as though intended for Napier at all; intended, no doubt, for an invisible Greta. But why should Greta have it all to herself?

"In time for what?" said Napier, looking down at the clear-cut profile at his side.

"She always got back-we've often talked about it-just as I was about to commit some awful mistake. What she 's saved me from!"

Napier was morally certain he could. have got her, if only for the honor and glory of Greta, to enumerate one or two of these timely rescues, if, by a stroke of rank bad luck, Julian had n't appeared at that moment.

"Oh, my!" said Miss Ellis under her breath, which was silly as well as slightly

irritating. Moreover, this was a time of day, as none knew better than Julian, when the private secretary was not supposed to be accessible to outside friends. He would by rights be in the library, buried in the morning's work. And, further, it was not lost on Napier that "old Julian" did n't so much as trouble to affect surprise at finding Miss Ellis sit ting on the Kirklamont fender; at an hour, too, which must be considered distinctly early for a visit even for the most familiar friend of the house.

With a casual "Hello!" Julian came marching over to the fireplace.

"You 're being very energetic all of a sudden," Napier said, with his smiling malice. "This early worm, Miss Ellis, is Mr. Grant."

"I'm very glad to meet you." She stood up and held out her hand.

"She 's an early worm herself. Are n't you?" said Mr. Grant. "Good thing, "Good thing, too. If you had n't shouted, I might n't. have noticed that brute."

"Was n't it awful?" She turned to Napier. "I was going up that little hill in front of the inn, and I saw a man in a field down below just beating and beating a horse. Oh, my! I screamed at him to stop, and then Mr. Grant came along the lower road." Smiling, she looked at Julian. "I wonder what would have happened if I had n't."

"What would have happened? Who to?"

"Well-er,"-Julian laughed out, as he used to in the old Eton days,-"I suppose I meant to the horse."

"Oh, to the horse. Why, just what did happen? That horrid man would have stopped-"

"I should have stopped it," she said with firmness. "And I should have asked him to promise not to do it again."

"Oh, you would! I can't see Jock Gillies promising that."

"Very well, then, if he would n't promise, I should have told him I would have to report him. But now I can leave it to you. He did n't like your catching him. I could see that."

"Well, he 's one of our hinds." "One of your what?"

She capped his explanation with the

comment:

"Sounds to me like Shakspere." And then, smiling into his eyes, added, "Oh, my! has n't it been a splendid morning!" And did they have many days so unScotch-misty as this?

They went on uttering banalities about the morning and the country-side, but smiling into each other's faces in a way that said nothing in all this land they had fallen to praising was so interesting as something each one saw in the other's eyes.

Napier sat on the fender smiling to himself. Fancy old Julian! Do him all the good in the world to have a girl looking at him like that. And for Julian to be aware of it, to get his head out of the clouds and go in for anything as normal. and rational as a little flirtation with a nicish sort of girl!

Napier must encourage this departure. He encouraged it in the first instance by effacing himself.

"I do so want to see as much as I can of" she meant Mr. Grant, as you could see before she finished, but she called him "this lovely coast." And could he advise her what to begin with?

"Really!" She opened her gray eyes very wide.

"Well," said Julian, "have n't you?" "No, indeed. If he had n't stopped, I If he had n't stopped, I should have gone down."

Both men laughed.

"Oh, you think," said Julian, "that would have struck terror?"

anybody from the king and the cabinet. down; so of course he could oblige Miss Ellis. He even Julian! with whom, after all, modesty as to himself was a cult, if not a disease-he boasted. He knew this part of the world, he told her, as only the man who is able to do his twenty miles a day on foot can know it. He knew it from the back of a horse as the

man must who rides. Farther afield still, he knew his Scotland as the motorist knows it

"Oh, but stop! stop!" said the girl. "I must n't be made greedier than I am. I want a modest selection. Just the most wonderful things."

"Why," Julian demanded with the first shadow of disapproval on his face"why should you insist on the mere tourist's point of view?"

"Because, the misfortune of it is, I've only got the mere tourist's amount of time."

"Oh!" A chill wind nipped Mr. Grant's expansiveness. "How many weeks are you likely "

"Weeks? No weeks at all. Two or three days."

"That 's absurd. You can't see anything to speak of in-and why?" Miss Ellis shook her head. "It does seem a pity."

"It 's absurd," Julian repeated. "What is the hurry? Where are you going?" "Greta thinks London-she knows of some very nice rooms.

"London?"

"Well, there is the National Gallery and the old city churches," Nan said with marked absence of enthusiasm. "Oh, I don't doubt really but I shall find it perfectly fascinating. And then from time to time my friend will run down for a day or two."

"Your friend?"

"Yes, Greta, Miss von Schwarzenberg."

"Well, it is n't my business," Julian said in that tone which people adopt who have definitely adopted the business in question, "but it sounds to me the very poorest " he left it hanging there.

"Surely," Napier observed quietly, "when you came, you meant to stay longer?"

She turned with a look of candid surprise at the reminder of the other man's

presence.

"Oh-yes," and her eyes seemed to claim sympathy from him since he was there. "Yes, when I first came. But,

you see, I did n't understand. I thought being a governess here was like being a governess at home." And quickly, as though to obliterate any suggestion of odious comparison, "Perhaps it's because we have so few governesses in California."

"Well, how does that make it different for them?"

"Well, we give them time to themselves. I-I don't criticize your way," she threw in, a little flustered to find where she was going, "only we—oh, here is Lady McIntyre!" she ended with much relief.

The manners of the lady of Kirklamont were in marked contrast to her pinched and chilled appearance. Her fairness was the kind that goes with a slightly reddened nose and a faint bluish tinge about the mouth at this hour of the morning, before, as she had been known to say, either she or the house warmed up. She was most genial to Miss Ellis, and the girl was, in her turn, won to ease and confidence.

I

"No, thank you, I won't sit down. did n't mean to stay but half a minute, though I 'm afraid Greta may think even now that I still don't understand that her time belongs to you."

"But we are not such slave-drivers!" The little lady shook her diamond earrings. "Greta is too punctilious." They all thought it very good of Miss von Schwarzenberg, Lady McIntyre went on, not to insist on a complete holiday after being with them steadily for over a year. She could certainly take any day off to be with her friend, and every day she of course had several hours at her disposal whenever she wished.

"That is kind of you!" the girl said and beamed.

Lady McIntyre did n't, she said, know where Greta was at the moment, "but Madge will soon have finished her practising, and she 'll love to show you her pony and the kennels, if you care."

Miss von Schwarzenberg, in the act of descending the stairs, had paused the fraction of a second.

A

FTER precariously surmounting certain impressive Flemish feet near the door, we groped across the compartment and took possession of the two seats by the windows. The engine was sniffling and snuffling its way out of the Gare du Nord, like a strong man blowing his nose in a cold, damp evening. A clammy drizzle percolated through the shadows of Brussels, and as our decrepit war-time train began to ooze through the darkness, the darkness and the moisture seemed themselves to ooze through the train and through us. Without being actually wet, we felt saturated. It was what English story-tellers love to call "a thick night." At that moment my thoughts dwelt upon anything other than the story of the Mayor of X

"Only an hour and half to Antwerp, old chap," remarked my friend, with studied cheeriness. "Just time for a pipe," he added, as though there were danger lest the train burst unceremoniously clear through the station at Antwerp and out into the zoological gardens, perhaps, before he could tamp his tobacco properly. He eyed me quizzically. "I really ought n't to smoke another one, you know; but I guess that's the best reason for doing it, is n't it?"

Was it a good reason? I do not know. I know his way of saying that added just one to the scores of reasons I already had for loving him.

As we rattled along in the lost nowhere of the night between Schaerbeek and Michlin, I poked my forehead against the glass and tried to fathom the secrets one always tries to fathom out of a car-window on a rainy night. Oddly enough, through all the wetness of things a little peel of moon kept itself whole and trim and reasonably bright far up in the sky.

How it avoided dissolving forthwith nobody could tell. One ceases even to ponder over the vagaries of nature in Belgium. By that faint pale light I could barely detect the country-side lying low and broad beyond the window-pane. Rows of gaunt trees marched stalwart and stiff against the gloom which crowded up on all sides. That black smudge was a farm, and this tangle of darkness a town. What town was it? Vilvorde?

My friend's pipe winked artfully at me, as though to observe:

"I wonder what mischief you 've been up to in Brussels this time; but if it was not too bad, I really don't mind."

"What commune was that?" I propounded, to show how obvious it was that I had been up to no mischief at all.

"Vilvorde. You can tell by the church." My friend knew. My friend knew everything about Belgium.

After that we began talking, my friend and I.

can't understand

"The north of France," repeated my friend. He sighed, and puffed up the red of his pipe, thoughtfully. "Something I can't understand about them, those French," he mused. "How can they be that way? How can they take the Germans so easily? How can they hobnob with the burglar in the house? Here in Belgium you feel the tang of resistance. every hour, every click of the clock. Stubborn, unyielding—always that leashed revolt. Every morning Belgium refuses anew to capitulate. Here a German is morally quarantined. But in the north of France! The French talk with them, dine with them, joke with them. The French beat them at billiards, call them by name. Really, old chap, really, I can't make it out."

"Conditions are so different down there in the French étape," I argued. "The