ate colour. He noticed, too, that the hand which he took in his
was long and soft and tapering--in short, she looked thoroughbred from
head to heel, and yet, judged by the most ordinary canons of beauty, he
recognised that Aletta De la Rey was not even pretty.

Her features were lacking. They were not regular, and the mouth was
somewhat too large. But it was redeemed by white and even teeth, and a
way of rippling into a sudden, whole-hearted, and very musical laugh;
indeed, the whole expression of her face would light up in a way that
rendered it subtly but most unequivocally taking and attractive.

Now, as she greeted Colvin Kershaw for the first time a gleam of just
that sudden mirth shot from her eyes. He, reading it aright, became
alive to the fact that he did not show to his best advantage, rigged out
in a suit of her father's clothes, which was both too long and too wide
for him, and, for once in a way, he owned, within his inner self, to a
consciousness of feeling ever so slightly disconcerted. But he said
quietly:

"Be merciful, Miss De la Rey. At any rate, I am dry and warm after my
soaking, for which I feel devoutly grateful."

The colour rushed into Aletta's face as a very wave, but the laugh did
not go out of her eyes; on the contrary, it intensified in its struggle
not to break forth.

"What a thought-reader you are, Mr Kershaw!" she answered. "But,
don't--please don't think me very rude, but--I've--I've heard so much
about you that--I seem to know you well already--"

And then the laugh would no longer be kept down. It broke forth in a
merry, hearty, silvery peal.

"Aletta!" cried her mother, horror-stricken. "How can you be so rude?
What will Mr Kershaw think of you? And when are you going to begin and
pour out his coffee for him?"

But, whatever Colvin thought or did not think, there was something so
entirely infectious in that laugh that he was joining in it himself with
a whole-heartedness which left nothing to be desired; and there was the
strange spectacle of two people who had just met for the first time,
laughing--as they afterwards put it to each other--like a pair of
idiots, one at the other, and that other joining heartily in the joke
against himself.

"It's--it's all right, Miss De la Rey," said the latter, when
sufficiently recovered to be able to speak coherently. "I am glad to
hear you say you seem to know me so well already, because in that case
you wilt know that I li