raising my
eyes saw a motor-car coming up the drive. It contained three gentlemen,
one of them wore goggles and carried a silver-haired terrier on his
knees.

A little later Nessy MacLeod came to tell me that Lord Raa and his party
had arrived and I was wanted immediately.

I went downstairs hesitatingly, with a haunting sense of coming trouble.
Reaching the door of the drawing-room I saw my intended husband for the
first time--there being nothing in his appearance to awaken in me the
memory of ever having seen him before.

He was on the hearthrug in front of the fire, talking to Betsy Beauty,
who was laughing immoderately. To get a better look at him, and at the
same time to compose myself, I stopped for a moment to speak to the
three gentlemen (the two lawyers and Lord Raa's trustee or guardian) who
were standing with my father in the middle of the floor.

He was undoubtedly well-dressed and had a certain air of breeding, but
even to my girlish eyes he betrayed at that first sight the character of
a man who had lived an irregular, perhaps a dissipated life.

His face was pale, almost puffy, his grey eyes were slow and heavy, his
moustache was dark and small, his hair was thin over his forehead, and
he had a general appearance of being much older than his years, which I
knew to be thirty-three.

His manners, when I approached him, were courteous and gentle, almost
playful and indulgent, but through all their softness there pierced a
certain hardness, not to say brutality, which I afterwards learned (when
life had had its tug at me) to associate with a man who has spent much
of his time among women of loose character.

Betsy Beauty made a great matter of introducing us; but in a drawling
voice, and with a certain play of humour, he told her it was quite
unnecessary, since we were very old friends, having made each other's
acquaintance as far back as ten years ago, when I was the prettiest
little woman in the world, he remembered, though perhaps my manners were
not quite cordial.

"We had a slight difference on the subject of kisses. Don't you remember
it?"

Happily there was no necessity to reply, for my father came to say that
he wished to show his lordship the improvements he had been making, and
the rest of us were at liberty to follow them.

The improvements consisted chiefly of a new wing to the old house,
containing a dining room, still unfurnished, which had been modelled, as
I found later, on the co