no
desire to be known as a writer. Yet Number Five has more esprit, more
sparkle, more sense in her talk, than many a famous authoress from whom
we should expect brilliant conversation.

There are mysteries about Number Five. I am not going to describe her
personally. Whether she belongs naturally among the bright young people,
or in the company of the maturer persons, who have had a good deal
of experience of the world, and have reached the wisdom of the riper
decades without losing the graces of the earlier ones, it would be hard
to say. The men and women, young and old, who throng about her forget
their own ages. "There is no such thing as time in her presence," said
the Professor, the other day, in speaking of her. Whether the Professor
is in love with her or not is more than I can say, but I am sure that he
goes to her for literary sympathy and counsel, just as I do. The reader
may remember what Number Five said about the possibility of her getting
a sprained ankle, and her asking the young Doctor whether he felt equal
to taking charge of her if she did. I would not for the world insinuate
that he wishes she would slip and twist her foot a little,--just a
little, you know, but so that it would have to be laid on a pillow in
a chair, and inspected, and bandaged, and delicately manipulated. There
was a banana-skin which she might naturally have trodden on, in her way
to the tea-table. Nobody can suppose that it was there except by the
most innocent of accidents. There are people who will suspect everybody.
The idea of the Doctor's putting that banana-skin there! People love to
talk in that silly way about doctors.

Number Five had promised to read us a narrative which she thought would
interest some of the company. Who wrote it she did not tell us, but I
inferred from various circumstances that she had known the writer. She
read the story most effectively in her rich, musical voice. I noticed
that when it came to the sounds of the striking clock, the ringing of
the notes was so like that which reaches us from some far-off cathedral
tower that we wanted to bow our heads, as if we had just heard a summons
to the Angelus. This was the short story that Number Five read to The
Teacups:--

I have somewhere read this anecdote. Louis the Fourteenth was looking
out, one day, from, a window of his palace of Saint-Germain. It was
a beautiful landscape which spread out before him, and the monarch,
exulting in health, strength