nto my mouth,"
Berrington protested. "Looking round the table I can see four girls at
least who are envying you from the bottom of their hearts. Now could any
society woman be miserable under those circumstances?"

Beatrice flushed a little as she toyed nervously with her bread.
Berrington's words were playful enough, but there was a hidden meaning
behind them that Beatrice did not fail to notice. In a way he was
telling her how sorry he was; Richford had been more or less dragged
into a sporting discussion by the lady on the other side, so that
Beatrice and her companion had no fear of being interrupted. Their eyes
met for a moment.

"I don't think they have any great need to be envious," the girl said.
"Colonel Berrington, I am going to ask what may seem a strange question
under the circumstances. I am going to make a singular request.
Everybody likes and trusts you. I have liked and trusted you since the
first day I met you. Will you be my friend,--if anything happens when I
want a friend sorely, will you come to me and help me? I know it is
singular----"

"It is not at all singular," Berrington said in a low voice. He shot a
quick glance of dislike at Richford's heavy jowl. "One sees things,
quiet men like myself always see things. And I understand exactly what
you mean. If I am in England I will come to you. But I warn you that my
time is fully occupied. All my long leave----"

"But surely you have no work to do whilst you are in England on leave?"

"Indeed I have. I have a quest, a search that never seems to end. I
thought that I had finished it to-night, and singularly enough, in this
very hotel. I can't go into the matter here with all this chattering mob
of people about us, for the story is a sad one. But if ever you should
chance to meet a grey lady with brown eyes and lovely grey hair----"

"The stranger! How singular!" Beatrice exclaimed. "Why, only to-night in
this very room."

"Ah!" the word came with a gasp almost like pain from Berrington's lips.
The laughter and chatter of the dinner-table gave these two a sense of
personal isolation. "That is remarkable. I am looking for a grey lady,
and I trace her to this hotel--quite by accident, and simply because I
am dining here to-night. And you saw her in this room?"

"I did," Beatrice said eagerly. "She came here by mistake; evidently she
had quite lost herself in this barrack of a place. She was dressed from
head to foot in silver grey, she had just