girl so freshly and typically English. I had thought at the moment of
meeting her that she was provokingly pretty; I determined, as the lunch
proceeded, that she was beautiful. Once I caught Harley smiling at me
in his quizzical fashion, and I wondered guiltily if I were displaying
an undue interest in the companion of Madame.

Many topics were discussed, I remember, and beyond doubt the colonel's
cousin-housekeeper dominated the debate. She possessed extraordinary
force of personality. Her English was not nearly so fluent as that
spoken by the colonel, but this handicap only served to emphasize the
masculine strength of her intellect. Truly she was a remarkable woman.
With her blanched hair and her young face, and those fine, velvety eyes
which possessed a quality almost hypnotic, she might have posed for the
figure of a sorceress. She had unfamiliar gestures and employed her
long white hands in a manner that was new to me and utterly strange.

I could detect no family resemblance between the cousins, and I
wondered if their kinship were very distant. One thing was evident
enough: Madame de Staemer was devoted to the Colonel. Her expression
when she looked at him changed entirely. For a woman of such intense
vitality her eyes were uncannily still; that is to say that whilst she
frequently moved her head she rarely moved her eyes. Again and again I
found myself wondering where I had seen such eyes before. I lived to
identify that memory, as I shall presently relate.

In vain I endeavoured to define the relationship between these three
people, so incongruously set beneath one roof. Of the fact that Miss
Beverly was not happy I became assured. But respecting her exact
position in the household I was reduced to surmises.