of gentle gray eyes set rather wide apart in a delicate, colourless
face.

"Oh! thank you!" I hesitated. "I--"

"Do forgive me," went on the lady, "but your face interested me this
morning, and as we're all rather curious about strangers--we idle ones
here--I took the liberty of asking the manager who you were. He told
me--"

"About the Princess?" I asked, when she paused as if slightly
embarrassed.

"He told me that you said you had come to Cannes to be her companion. He
didn't tell me she was dead, poor woman, but--there are some things one
knows by instinct, by intuition, aren't there? And then--I couldn't help
seeing, or perhaps only imagining, that you looked sad and worried. You
are very young, and are here all alone, and so--I thought perhaps you
wouldn't mind my speaking to you?"

"I'm very grateful," I said, "for your interest. And it's so good of you
to ask me to have coffee with you." (I was almost sure, too, that she
had hurried away in the midst of her luncheon to do this deed of
kindness.)

"Perhaps, after all, you'll come with me to my own sitting-room," she
suggested. "We can talk more quietly there; and though the garden's
quite lovely, it's rather too glaring at this time of day."

We went up in the lift together, and the moment she opened the door of