t up a little
higher than the right; and her smile began in her eyes and ran down to
her lips in two lines of light. He had dashed past that to reach Lady
Ulrica Crispin!

"But of course you wouldn't remember me," she was saying. "My name is
Viner--Sophy Viner."

Not remember her? But of course he DID! He was genuinely sure of it now.
"You're Mrs. Murrett's niece," he declared.

She shook her head. "No; not even that. Only her reader."

"Her reader? Do you mean to say she ever reads?"

Miss Viner enjoyed his wonder. "Dear, no! But I wrote notes, and made up
the visiting-book, and walked the dogs, and saw bores for her."

Darrow groaned. "That must have been rather bad!"

"Yes; but nothing like as bad as being her niece."

"That I can well believe. I'm glad to hear," he added, "that you put it
all in the past tense."

She seemed to droop a little at the allusion; then she lifted her chin
with a jerk of defiance. "Yes. All is at an end between us. We've just
parted in tears--but not in silence!"

"Just parted? Do you mean to say you've been there all this time?"

"Ever since you used to come there to see Lady Ulrica? Does it seem to
you so awfully long ago?"

The unexpectedness of the thrust--as well as its doubtful taste--chilled
his growing enjoyment of her chatter. He had really been getting to
like her--had recovered, under the candid approval of her eye, his
usual sense of being a personable young man, with all the privileges
pertaining to the state, instead of the anonymous rag of humanity he
had felt himself in the crowd on the pier. It annoyed him, at that
particular moment, to be reminded that naturalness is not always
consonant with taste.

She seemed to guess his thought. "You don't like my saying that you came
for Lady Ulrica?" she asked, leaning over the table to pour herself a
second cup of tea.

He liked her quickness, at any rate. "It's better," he laughed, "than
your thinking I came for Mrs. Murrett!"

"Oh, we never thought anybody came for Mrs. Murrett! It was always for
something else: the music, or the cook--when there was a good one--or
the other people; generally ONE of the other people."

"I see."

She was amusing, and that, in his present mood, was more to his purpose
than the exact shade of her taste. It was odd, too, to discover suddenly
that the blurred tapestry of Mrs. Murrett's background had all the while
been alive and full of eyes. Now, with a pair of them looking into