looked at him wistfully, but with some unwilling doubt in her
wrinkled forehead. It was excellently done, especially as she loved
good dinners.

"You are very kind to think of it," she said, "but--don't you think
perhaps--that I had better not?"

He smiled indulgently.

"My dear child," he said, "with me you need have no apprehension. I am
almost old enough to be your father."

She looked at him with uplifted eyebrows--a look of whimsical
incredulity. Sir John felt that after all forty-five was not so very
old.

"That sounds quite absurd," she answered. "Yet it is my last evening,
and I think--if you are sure that you would like to have me--that I
will risk it."

"We will go to a very quiet place," he assured her, "a place where I
have often taken my own sisters. You will be wearing your travelling
dress, and no doubt you would prefer it. Shall we say at half-past
seven?"

She rose from her chair.

"I will take a carriage," she said, "and fetch my things."

"Let us say that Cafe Maston, in the Boulevard des Italiennes, at
half-past seven then," he decided. "I shall be waiting for you there,
and in the meantime, if you will help yourself--pray don't look like
that. It is a very small affair, after all, and you can pay me back if
you will."

She took the pocket-book and looked up at him with a little impulsive
movement. Her voice shook, her eyes were very soft and melting.

"I cannot thank you, Sir John," she said. "I shall never be able to
thank you."

"Won't you postpone the attempt, then?" he said gallantly, "until I
have done something to deserve your gratitude? You will not
forget--seven-thirty, Cafe Maston, Boulevard des Italiennes."

She drove off in a little _fiacre_, nodding and smiling at Sir John,
who remained upon the Avenue. He too, when she had disappeared, called
a carriage.

"Hotel Ritz," he said mechanically to the coachman. "If only her
sister is half as pretty, no wonder that she has set the Parisians
talking."

_Chapter II_

THE ADVENTURE OF ANNABEL

The man spoke mercilessly, incisively, as a surgeon. Only he hated the
words he uttered, hated the blunt honesty which forced them from his
lips. Opposite, his pupil stood with bowed head and clasped hands.

"You have the temperament," he said. "You have the ideas. Your first
treatment of a subject is always correct, always suggestive. But of
what avail is this? You have no execution, no finish. You lack only
that mechani