say, an attitude of the strictest reserve. The keen gray eyes were
respectful attentive, courteous--especially when they were turned to
Miss Lind; beyond that, nothing.

Now they had not been seated at the dinner-table more than a few minutes
before George Brand began to ask himself whether it was really Curzon
Street he was dining in. The oddly furnished room was adorned with
curiosities to which every capital in Europe would seem to have
contributed. The servants, exclusively women, were foreign; the table
glass and decorations were all foreign; the unostentatious little
banquet was distinctly foreign. Why, the very bell that had summoned
them down--what was there in the soft sound of it that had reminded him
of something far away? It was a haunting sound, and he kept puzzling
over the vague association it seemed to call up. At last he frankly
mentioned the matter to Miss Lind, who seemed greatly pleased.

"Ah, did you like the sound?" she said, in that low and harmonious voice
of hers. "The bell was an invention of my own; shall I show it to you?"

The Dresden shepherdess, by name Anneli, being despatched into the hall,
presently returned with an object somewhat resembling in shape a
Cheshire cheese, but round at the top, formed of roughly filed metal of
a lustrous yellow-gray. Round the rude square handle surmounting it was
carelessly twisted a bit of old orange silk; other decoration there was
none.

"Do you see what it is now?" she said. "Only one of the great bells the
people use for the cattle on the Campagna. Where did I get it? Oh, you
know the Piazza Montenara, in Rome, of course? There is a place there
where they sell such things to the country people. You could get one