n a very
busy man, Miss Mallory, and my holidays had been generally spent in
Ireland. But that year"--he paused a moment--"that year I had been ill,
and the doctors sent me abroad--in October," he added, slowly and
precisely. "I went first to Paris, and I was at Genoa in November."

"We must have been there--just about then! Mamma died in October. And I
remember the winter was just beginning at Genoa--it was very cold--and I
got bronchitis--I was only a little thing."

"And Oliver tells me you found a home at Portofino?"

Diana replied. He kept her talking; yet her impression was that he did
not listen very much to what she said. At the same time she felt herself
_studied_, in a way which made her self-conscious, which perhaps she
might have resented in any man less polished and less courteous.

"Pardon me--" he said, abruptly, at a pause in the conversation. "Your
name interests me particularly. It is Welsh, is it not? I knew two or
three persons of that name; and they were Welsh."

Diana's look changed a little.

"Yes, it is Welsh," she said, in a hesitating, reserved voice; and then
looked round her as though in search of a change of topic.

Sir James bent forward.

"May I come and see you some day at Beechcote?"

Diana flushed with surprise and pleasure.

"Oh! I should be so honored!"

"The honor would be mine," he said, with pleasant deference. "Now I
think I see that Marsham is wroth with me for monopolizing you
like this."

He rose and walked away, just as Marsham brought up Mr. Barton to
introduce him to Diana.

Sir James wandered on into a small drawing-room at the end of the long
suite of rooms; in its seclusion he turned back to look at the group he
had left behind. His face, always delicately pale, had grown strained
and white.

"Is it _possible_"--he said to himself--"that she knows nothing?--that
that man was able to keep it all from her?"

He walked up and down a little by himself--pondering--the prey of the
same emotion as had seized him in the afternoon; till at last his ear
was caught by some hubbub, some agitation in the big drawing-room,
especially by the sound of the girlish voice he had just been listening
to, only speaking this time in quite another key. He returned to see
what was the matter.

* * * * *

He found Miss Mallory the centre of a circle of spectators and
listeners, engaged apparently in a three-cornered and very hot
discussion with