vate detectives, saw a man with a long
grey beard and a jovial face go up the steps helping himself with a
thick stick, and knock at the door. Who could he be?

He was one of Miss de Barral's masters. She had lately taken up
painting in water-colours, having read in a high-class woman's weekly
paper that a great many princesses of the European royal houses were
cultivating that art. This was the water-colour morning; and the
teacher, a veteran of many exhibitions, of a venerable and jovial
aspect, had turned up with his usual punctuality. He was no great
reader of morning papers, and even had he seen the news it is very
likely he would not have understood its real purport. At any rate he
turned up, as the governess expected him to do, and the Fynes saw him
pass through the fateful door.

He bowed cordially to the lady in charge of Miss de Barral's education,
whom he saw in the hall engaged in conversation with a very good-looking
but somewhat raffish young gentleman. She turned to him graciously:
"Flora is already waiting for you in the drawing-room."

The cultivation of the art said to be patronised by princesses was
pursued in the drawing-room from considerations of the right kind of
light. The governess preceded the master up the stairs and into the
room where Miss de Barral was found arrayed in a holland pinafore (also
of the right kind for the pursuit of the art) and smilingly expectant.
The water-colour lesson enlivened by the jocular conversation of the
kindly, humorous, old man was always great fun; and she felt she would
be compensated for the tiresome beginning of the day.

Her governess generally was present at the lesson; but on this occasion
she only sat down till the master and pupil had gone to work in earnest,
and then as though she had suddenly remembered some order to give, rose
quietly and went out of the room.

Once outside, the servants summoned by the passing maid without a bell
being rung, and quick, quick, let all this luggage be taken down into
the hall, and let one of you call a cab. She stood outside the
drawing-room door on the landing, looking at each piece, trunk, leather
cases, portmanteaus, being carried past her, her brows knitted and her
aspect so sombre and absorbed that it took some little time for the
butler to muster courage enough to speak to her. But he reflected that
he was a free-born Briton and had his rights. He spoke straight to the
point but in the usual respe