hung with chintz and
supported by carved pillars, was spread with fine linen and covered with
a quilt made of small pieces of silk, lavender-perfumed. The great
wardrobe, with its solid mahogany doors, seemed ancient enough to have
stood in its place since the building of the house itself. A log of
sweet-smelling wood burned cheerfully in the open fireplace.

"Really," Louise decided, "we have been most fortunate. This is an
adventure! Aline, give me some black silk stockings and some black
slippers. I will change nothing else."

The maid obeyed in somewhat ominous silence. Her mistress, however, was
living in a little world of her own.

"John Strangewey!" she murmured to herself, glancing across the room at
the family tree. "It is really curious how that name brings with it a
sense of familiarity. It is so unusual, too. And what an unusual-looking
person! Do you think, Aline, that you ever saw any one so superbly
handsome?"

The maid's little grimace was expressive.

"Never, _madame_," she replied. "And yet to think of it--a gentleman, a
person of intelligence, who lives here always, outside the world, with
just a terrible old man servant, the only domestic in the house! Nearly
all the cooking is done at the bailiff's, a quarter of a mile away."

Louise nodded thoughtfully.

"It is very strange," she admitted. "I should like to understand it.
Perhaps," she added, half to herself, "some day I shall."

She passed across the room, and on her way paused before an old
cheval-glass, before which were suspended two silver candlesticks
containing lighted wax candles. She looked steadfastly at her own
reflection. A little smile parted her lips. In the bedroom of this
quaint farmhouse she was looking upon a face and a figure which the
illustrated papers and the enterprise of the modern photographer had
combined to make familiar to the world.

A curious feeling came to her that she was looking at the face of a
stranger. She gazed earnestly into the mirror, with new eyes and a new
curiosity. She contemplated critically the lines of her slender figure
in its neat, perfectly tailored skirt--the figure of a girl, it seemed,
notwithstanding her twenty-seven years. Her soft, white blouse was open
at the neck, displaying a beautifully rounded throat. Her eyes traveled
upward, and dwelt with an almost passionate interest upon the oval face,
a little paler at that moment than usual; with its earnest, brown eyes,
its faint, sil