, as we would, in the crowd that will be in
the drawing-room presently, so I wonder if you would give me an hour in
the library, tomorrow morning after breakfast. I suggest the library
because I find it is the one room in the house into which no one ever
seems to go. Of course, Colonel Youlter, if you have something else you
must needs do in the forenoon, pray don't regard my suggestion. Or, if
you would prefer that we walked and talked, I will gladly accommodate
myself to your time and your conveniences."

He assured her that he had made no plans for the morrow, and that he
would be delighted to meet her in the library, for a good long 'confab'
over the subject that evidently possessed a mutual attraction for them.

Mentally, while he studied her, he decided that her chief charm, in his
eyes, was her absolute naturalness and unconventionality. "But to some
men," he mused "what a danger zone she would prove. Allied to her great
beauty, her wealth, and her gifts, there is a way with her that would
make her almost absolutely irresistible if she had set her heart on
anything!"

An hour later that opinion deepened within him as he listened to her
singing in the drawing-room. She had been known to bluntly, flatly
refuse an Emperor who had asked her to sing, and yet to take a little
Sicillian street singer's tambourine from her hand, and sing the coppers
and silver out of the pockets of the folk who had crowded the
market-place at the first liquid notes of her song. She rarely sang in
the houses of her hosts and hostesses. Tonight she had voluntarily gone
to the piano, accompanying herself.

She sang in Hungarian, a folk-song, and a love song of the people of her
own land. Yearning and wistful, full of that curious mystical
melancholy, that always appealed to her own soul, and which characterizes
some of the oldest of the Hungarian folk-songs.

Her second song finished, amid the profoundest hush, she rose as suddenly
from the piano as she had seated herself. A little later she was missed
from the company. She had slipped away to her room, after a quiet
good-night to her table-companion, Colonel Youlter.

* * * * * *

At ten-thirty, next morning, Judith Montmarte entered the library. The
Colonel was there already. He rose to meet her, saying, "Where will you
sit? Where will you be most comfortable."

There was a decidedly "comfo" air about the luxuriously-furnished room.
Th