a tiny seedling in her heart. The girl bid
fair to be one of those women who develop late, who ripen slowly, like
the best fruit.

During the drive to the opera house the two women in Etta's snug little
brougham were silent. Etta had her thoughts to occupy her. She was at
the crucial point of a difficult game. She could not afford to allow
even a friend to see so much as the corners of the cards she held.

In the luxurious box it was easily enough arranged--Etta and Paul
together in front, De Chauxville and Maggie at the other corner of the
box.

"I have asked my friend Karl Steinmetz to come in during the evening,"
said Paul to Etta when they were seated. "He is anxious to make your
acquaintance. He is my--prime minister over in Russia."

Etta smiled graciously.

"It is kind of him," she answered, "to be anxious to make my
acquaintance."

She was apparently listening to the music; in reality she was hurrying
back mentally over half a dozen years. She had never had much to do with
the stout German philosopher, but she knew enough of him to scorn the
faint hope that he might have forgotten her name and her individuality.
Etta Bamborough had never been disconcerted in her life yet; this
incident came very near to bringing about the catastrophe.

"At what time," she asked, "is he coming in?"

"About half-past nine."

Etta had a watch on a bracelet on her arm. Such women always know the
time.

It was a race, and Etta won it. She had only half an hour. De Chauxville
was there, and Maggie with her quiet, honest eyes. But the widow of
Sydney Bamborough made Paul ask her to be his wife, and she promised to
give him his answer later. She did it despite a thousand difficulties
and more than one danger--accomplished it with, as the sporting people
say, plenty to spare--before the door behind them was opened by the
attendant, and Karl Steinmetz, burly, humorously imperturbable and
impenetrable, stood smiling gravely on the situation.

He saw Claude de Chauxville, and before the Frenchman had turned round
the expression on Steinmetz's large and placid countenance had changed
from the self-consciousness usually preceding an introduction to one of
a dim recognition.

"I have had the pleasure of meeting madame somewhere before, I think. In
St. Petersburg, was it not?"

Etta, composed and smiling, said that it was so, and introduced him to
Maggie. De Chauxville took the opportunity of leaving that young lady's
side, a