Do you mind if I sit down ?" Mrs.Lascelles drew in the hem of her pink muslin, with an all but insufferable gesture of unwilling resignation.

I took the next chair but one, but, leaning my elbow on the chair-back between us, was rather the gainer by the intervening inches, which enabled me to study a perfect profile and the most wonderful colouring as I could scarcely have done at still closer range.

She never turned to look at me, but simply listened while the band played, and people passed, and I said my say.

It was very short: there was so little that she did not know.

There was the excitement about Bob, his subsequent reappearance, our scene in his room and my last sight of him in the morning; but the bare facts went into few words, and there was no demand for details.