er, was one of
those young women who had baffled description for some years before she
had commenced to take life seriously. She was neither fair nor dark,
petite nor tall. No one could ever have called her nondescript, or have
extolled any particular grace of form or feature. Her complexion had
defied the ravages of sun and wind and that moderate indulgence in
cigarettes and cocktails which the youth of her day affected. Her nose
was inclined to be retrousse, her mouth tender but impudent, her grey
eyes mostly veiled in expression but capable of wonderful changes. She
was curled up in a chair when Nigel entered, immersed in a fashion
paper. She held out her left hand, which he raised to his lips.

"Well, Nigel, dear," she exclaimed, "what do you think of my new
profession?"

"I hate it," he answered frankly.

She sighed and laid down the fashion paper resignedly.

"You always did object to a woman doing anything in the least useful. Do
you realise that if anything in the world can save this stupid old
country, I have done it?"

"I realise that you've been running hideous risks," he replied.

She looked at him petulantly.

"What of it?" she demanded. "We all run risks when we do anything worth
while."

"Not quite the sort that you have been facing."

She smiled thoughtfully.

"Do you know exactly where I have been?" she asked.

"No idea," he confessed. "What my uncle has just told me was a complete
revelation, so far as I was concerned. I believed, with the rest of the
world, what the newspapers announced--that you were visiting Japan and
China, and afterwards the South Sea Islands, with the Wendercombes."

She smiled.

"Dad wanted to tell you," she said, "but it was I who made him promise
not to. I was afraid you would be disagreeable about it. We arranged it
all with the Wendercombes, but as a matter of fact I did not even start
with them. For the last eight months, I have been living part of the
time in Berlin and part of the time in a country house near the Black
Forest."

"Alone?"

"Not a bit of it! I have been governess to the two daughters of Herr
Essendorf."

"Essendorf, the President of the German Republic?"

Lady Maggie nodded.

"He isn't a bit like his pictures. He is a huge fat man and he eats a
great deal too much. Oh, the horror of those meals!" she added, with a
little shudder. "Think of me, dear Nigel, who never eat more than an
omelette and some fruit for luncheon, compelled to