g, as long as there was any light, and got a few
good bits of the old town; a shadowed glimpse of one of Utrecht's
strange canals, unique in Holland, with its double streets, one above
the other; an impression of the Cathedral spire, seen beyond a series of
arched bridges; a couple of fishermen bringing up a primitive net,
fastened on four branches, and sparkling as it came out of the water,
like a spider-web spun of crystal.

I was careful not to appear till dinner-time; but one is obliged in
self-defense to dine early in Holland, because what seems early to a
foreigner seems late to a Dutchman. At seven o'clock I went to the
L.C.P.'s sitting-room (it has become a regular thing for her to have a
sitting-room), and behold, they were all assembled.

Nell was plainly dressed in the simplest kind of a white frock, but
Phyllis had made quite a toilet. Poor child! I could guess why. She need
not, however, have given herself the pains. The fiancee, compared with
her, was like a withered lemon beside a delicately ripening peach.

The van Buren twins are delicious creatures; but they did not count in
the little drama. Besides, they are, in any case, too young for drama.
They are just beginning to rehearse for the first act of life; and I
think for them it will be a pretty pastoral, never drama or tragedy, or
even lively comedy.

I knew from Phyllis's description what sort of girl the fiancee would
turn out to be, except that I didn't expect to find her quite so smart.
Her dress, and the hat she had put on for the hotel dinner, might have
come from the Rue de la Paix; which was all the more credit to her, as I
have heard a dozen times if I have heard it once, that she is very
poor--as poor as she is proud.

Now was my time to set the ball rolling; and valiantly I gave it the
first kick. I feigned to be much taken at first sight with the young
lady from The Hague. At once I flung myself into conversation with her,
in which we were both so deeply absorbed, that when the L.C.P. suggested
going down to dinner, nobody can have been surprised when I said,
"Please, all whom it may concern, I want to sit next to Freule Menela
van der Windt at the dinner table." Indeed, most of the party have long
passed the stage of being surprised at anything I do; a state of mind to
which I have carefully trained them. The Viking, however, has not often
seen me at my best, so he stared at this audacity, but on second
thoughts decided not to be di