shadow. But to me she extended
her hand with a slight stiffening, as it were a recoil of her person,
combined with an extremely straight glance. It was a finely shaped,
capable hand. I bowed over it, and we just touched fingers. I did not
look then at her face.

Next moment she caught sight of some envelopes lying on the round
marble-topped table in the middle of the hall. She seized one of them
with a wonderfully quick, almost feline, movement and tore it open,
saying to us, "Excuse me, I must . . . Do go into the dining-room.
Captain Blunt, show the way."

Her widened eyes stared at the paper. Mr. Blunt threw one of the doors
open, but before we passed through it we heard a petulant exclamation
accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a laugh
which had in it a note of contempt.

The door closed behind us; we had been abandoned by Mr. Blunt. He had
remained on the other side, possibly to soothe. The room in which we
found ourselves was long like a gallery and ended in a rotunda with many
windows. It was long enough for two fireplaces of red polished granite.
A table laid out for four occupied very little space. The floor inlaid
in two kinds of wood in a bizarre pattern was highly waxed, reflecting
objects like still water.

Before very long Dona Rita and Blunt rejoined us and we sat down around
the table; but before we could begin to talk a dramatically sudden ring
at the front door stilled our incipient animation. Dona Rita looked at
us all in turn, with surprise and, as it were, with suspicion. "How did
he know I was here?" she whispered after looking at the card which was
brought to her. She passed it to Blunt, who passed it to Mills, who
made a faint grimace, dropped it on the table-cloth, and only whispered
to me, "A journalist from Paris."

"He has run me to earth," said Dona Rita. "One would bargain for peace
against hard cash if these fellows weren't always ready to snatch at
one's very soul with the other hand. It frightens me."

Her voice floated mysterious and penetrating from her lips, which moved
very little. Mills was watching her with sympathetic curiosity. Mr.
Blunt muttered: "Better not make the brute angry." For a moment Dona
Rita's face, with its narrow eyes, its wide brow, and high cheek bones,
became very still; then her colour was a little heightened. "Oh," she
said softly, "let him come in. He would be really dangerous if he had a
mind--you know,"