into a small morning-room.

"We can rest for a few minutes in here," she remarked. "You can consider
it a special mark of favour, for this is my own den."

"You are spoiling me," Wrayson declared, laughing. "May I see those
photographs?"

"If you like," she answered, "only you mustn't be too critical, for I'm
only a beginner, you know. Here's a bookful of them you can look through,
while I go and start the next set."

She placed a volume in his hand and swung out of the room, tall, fresh,
and graceful. Wrayson watched her admiringly. In her perfect naturalness
and unaffected good-humour, she reminded him a good deal of her father,
but curiously enough there was some other likeness which appealed to him
even more powerfully, and yet which he was unable to identify. It puzzled
him so that for a moment or two after her departure he sat watching the
door through which she had disappeared, with a slight frown upon his
forehead. She was undoubtedly charming, and yet something in connection
with her seemed to impress him with an impending sense of trouble.
Everything about her person and manners was frank and girlish, and yet
she was certainly recalling to his mind things that he had been
struggling all the afternoon to forget. Already he began to feel the
clouds of nervousness and depression stealing down upon him. He struck
the table with his clenched fist. He would have none of it. Outside was
the delicious sunshine, through the open window stole in the perfume of
the roses which covered the wall, and mignonette from the trim borders,
and stocks from the bed fringing the lawn. The murmur of pleasant
conversation was incessant and musical. For a time Wrayson had escaped.