of women, all in wonderful toilets, with wonderful hair and
head-gear, all wonderfully young and pleased with things, and all four
centuries dead. They caused her a little feeling of uneasiness, they
were so dead and silent, and yet somehow, in their fixed postures, with
their unblinking eyes, their unvarying smiles, so--as it seemed to
her--so watchful, so intent; and it was a relief to turn from them to
the window, to the picture framed by the window of warm, breathing,
heedless nature. But all the while, in her interior mind, she was busy
with the man before her. "He looks," she considered, "tall as he is, and
with his radiant blondeur--with the gold in his hair and beard, and the
sea-blue in his eyes--he looks like a hero out of some old Norse saga.
He looks like-what's his name?--like Odin. I must really compel him to
explain himself."

It very well may be, meantime, that he was reciprocally busy with her,
taking her in, admiring her, this big, jolly, comely, high-mannered old
woman, all in soft silks and drooping laces, who had driven into his
solitude from Heaven knew where, and was quite unquestionably Someone,
Heaven knew who.

She had a moment of abstraction; but now, emerging from it, she used her
eyeglass as a pointer, and indicatively swept the circle of painted
eavesdroppers.

"They make one feel like their grandmother, their youth is so flagrant,"
she sighed, "these grandmothers of the Quattrocento. Ah, well, we can
only be old once, and we should take advantage of the privileges of age
while we have 'em. Old people, I am thankful to say, are allowed,
amongst other things, to be inquisitive. I'm brazenly so. Now, if one of
our common acquaintances were at hand--for with England still mercifully
small, we're sure to possess a dozen, you and I--what do you think is
the question I should ask him?--I should ask him," she avowed, with a
pretty effect of hesitation, and a smile that went as an advance-guard
to disarm resentment, "to tell me who you are, and all about you--and to
introduce you to me."

"Oh," cried the young man, laughing. He laughed for a second or two. In
the end, pleasantly, with a bow, "My name," he said, "if you can
possibly care to know, is Blanchemain."

His visitor caught her breath. She sat up straight, and gazed hard at
him.

"Blanchemain?" she gasped.

VII

There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should make
her sit up straight. Her curiosity had t