it with
him, and bring him back so he can have tea with your grandmother at
five; this evening the rest of us will have our chance to see him."

She did not look at Cynthia, but with a woman's forethought she
remembered that the verandas were roomy and that the moon was full soon
after dinner. Cynthia remembered it too and smiled.

"Yes, go ahead, Roger," she called. "Take Bob round the bay. It is a
lovely sail and as he hasn't been here before he will enjoy it."

* * * * * *

It was only a little past five when the two young men returned, a glow
of health and pleasure on their faces.

"Now, Bobbie, do make haste," Mrs. Galbraith said, coming to meet him.
"Mother's tea has already gone up, and you know how she detests
waiting. Her maid is there in the hall to show you the way. Hurry
along, dear boy."

Robert Morton needed no second bidding and at once followed the
middle-aged English woman up the staircase and into a small,
chintz-hung sitting room that looked out on the sea.

At the farther end of it, seated before a low tea table, was a stately,
white-haired lady, very erect, very handsome and very elegantly dressed
in a gown of soft black material. At the neck, which was turned away,
she wore a fichu of filmy lace tinted by time to a creamy tone and held
in place by an old-fashioned medallion of seed pearls. White ruffles
at the wrists drooped over her delicately veined hands and showed only
the occasional flash of a ring and her perfectly manicured finger tips.
Summer or winter, fair weather or foul, Madam Lee never varied this
costume, and it seemed to possess some measure of its owner's eternal
youth, for it was always fresh and its lustrous folds always swept the
ground in the same dignified fashion. Indeed for those who knew Madam
Lee to think of her in any other guise would have been impossible. Her
silvered hair was parted and rippled over her forehead to her ears
where it was slightly puffed and caught back with combs of shell, and
from beneath it two little black eyes peered out with a bird's
alertness of gaze. Although age had claimed her strength, it was
evident from the woman's vivacious expression that she had lost none of
her interest in life and as she now sat before the silver-laden tea
table there was a girlish anticipation in her eager pose.

"Ah, you scamp!" cried she, when she heard her visitor's footstep in
the upper hall, "I have been waiting for