teur
theatricals at General Molon's. I am playing the part of Miss Smith, the
English governess, in Darbour's comedy, _Le Pyree_."

"And then you return to London, eh?"

"I hardly know. Yesterday I had a letter from Mrs. Caldwell saying that
she contemplated going to Italy this winter; therefore, perhaps mother
will let me go. I wrote to her this morning. The proposal is to spend
part of the time in Italy, and then cross from Naples to Egypt. I love
Egypt. We were there some winters ago, at the Winter Palace at Luxor."

"Your father and mother will remain at home, I suppose?"

"Mother hates travelling nowadays. She says she had quite sufficient of
living abroad in my father's lifetime. We were practically exiled for
years, you know. I was born in Lima, and I never saw England till I was
eleven. The Diplomatic Service takes one so out of touch with home."

"But Sir Hugh will go abroad this winter, eh?"

"I have not heard him speak of it. I believe he's too busy at the War
Office just now. They have some more 'reforms' in progress, I hear," and
she smiled.

He was looking straight into the girl's handsome face, his heart torn
between love and suspicion.

Those days at Biarritz recurred to him; how he would watch for her and go
and meet her down towards Grande Plage, till, by degrees, it had become
to both the most natural thing in the world. On those rare evenings when
they did not meet the girl was conscious of a little feeling of
disappointment which she was too shy to own, even to her own heart.

Walter Fetherston owned it freely enough. In that bright springtime the
day was incomplete unless he saw her; and he knew that, even now, every
hour was making her grow dearer to him. From that chance meeting at the
hotel their friendship had grown, and had ripened into something warmer,
dearer--a secret held closely in each heart, but none the less sweet for
that.

After leaving Biarritz the man had torn himself from her--why, he hardly
knew. Only he felt upon him some fatal fascination, strong and
irresistible. It was the first time in his life that he had been what is
vulgarly known as "over head and ears in love."

He returned to England, and then, a month later, his investigation of
Henry Bellairs' death, for the purpose of obtaining a plot for a new
novel he contemplated, revealed to him a staggering and astounding truth.

Even then, in face of that secret knowledge he had gained, he had been
powerless, and