een a Governor!"

The young lady called Florence stood looking down into the great
arm-chair in front of the Governor's table.

"May I?" she asked. She slid fearlessly in between the oak arms of the
chair and smiled about her. Afterwards Sir Charles remembered her as she
appeared at that moment with the red leather of the chair behind her,
with her gloved hands resting on the carved oak, and her head on one
side, smiling up at him. She gazed with large eyes at the blue linen
envelopes, the stiff documents in red tape, the tray of black sand, and
the goose-quill pens.

"I am now the Countess Zika," she announced; "no, I am Diana of the
Crossways, and I mean to discover a state secret and sell it to the
Daily Telegraph. Sir Charles," she demanded, "if I press this electric
button is war declared anywhere, or what happens?"

"That second button," said Sir Charles, after deliberate scrutiny, "is
the one which communicates with the pantry."

The Governor would not consider their returning to the yacht for
luncheon.

"You might decide to steam away as suddenly as you came," he said,
gallantly, "and I cannot take that chance. This is Bachelor's Hall, so
you must pardon my people if things do not go very smoothly." He himself
led them to the great guest-chamber, where there had not been a guest
for many years, and he noticed, as though for the first time, that
the halls through which they passed were bare, and that the floor was
littered with unpacked boxes and gun-cases. He also observed for the
first time that maps of the colony, with the coffee-plantations and
mahogany belt marked in different inks, were not perhaps so decorative
as pictures and mirrors and family portraits. And he could have wished
that the native servants had not stared so admiringly at the guests,
nor directed each other in such aggressive whispers. On those other
occasions, when the wives of the Councillors came to the semi-annual
dinners, the native servants had seemed adequate to all that was
required of them. He recollected with a flush that in the town these
semi-annual dinners were described as banquets. He wondered if to these
visitors from the outside world it was all equally provincial.

But their enjoyment was apparently unfeigned and generous. It was
evident that they had known each other for many years, yet they received
every remark that any of them made as though it had been pronounced by a
new and interesting acquaintance. Sir Charl