set in motion, and she bathed and dressed hastily,
having long ago ceased actively to miss Celestine's lost ministrations.

There was no sound in the next room. Kate was not yet awake, evidently;
and so, as she took quite two hours for dressing and beautifying, it
would be foolish to wait for her. Virginia went downstairs, looking about
in vain for Roger or George, and stepped out on to the wide verandah, for
a look at the Nile by morning light. To her joy the beautiful Portuguese
countess was there, breakfasting alone, with a yellow-covered French
novel open on the little table before her. Virginia instantly decided
that she would also breakfast on the verandah, and as near to the
Countess as possible.

As the American girl's pale blue serge rustled its silk lining along the
floor, the Portuguese woman raised her eyes from the novel she was
reading as she sipped her coffee. The eyes had appeared almost black in
the evening; now Virginia saw that they were a curious, greenish gray,
and her heart gave a leap, for the eyes of Liane Devereux, in the painted
ivory miniature, had been gray.

Now or never, Virginia said to herself, was the time to begin the
campaign. She seized the tide of fortune at its flood, and spoke in
English, making the most of the pretty, drawling Southern accent of the
State after which she had been named, because American girls were
privileged to be eccentric.

"Good morning," she said. "Oh, I do hope you understand my language,
because I want to tell you something."

The green-gray eyes of the Countess shone keenly between their heavy
black fringes during a silent moment of inspection, which must have shown
her Virginia divinely young, and childishly innocent of guile. At the end
of the moment she smiled.

"Yes, I understand English, and speak it a little," she responded, with a
charming accent, and in a voice musical but unexpectedly deep. "You are
American, is it not? What have you to tell me--that we have met before,
somewhere?"

At this--or Virginia imagined it--there came again a steely flash from
the black lashes. "Oh, no," said the girl hurriedly. "I never saw you
until yesterday. What I want to tell you is, that I hope you will forgive
me for staring at you as I did then. I was afraid you'd think me rude.
But I just couldn't help it, you are so beautiful. I adore beauty. You
can be sure now I'm American, can't you? for nobody but an American girl
would say such things to a perfect s