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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
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