sought....

Her bright glance, searching the thronged and buzzing place, fell on two empty chairs at the long table that ran down the middle of the room.

Ah! "They" weren't in for lunch, then? Nothing to be seen of "Them" until the dîner, perhaps. With a sigh of resignation Olwen Howel-Jones turned to the table for two near the end window where she was accustomed to sit with her Uncle.

But before she sat down, the tall Englishwoman in brown, who was sitting at the little table next to hers, caught the girl's eyes, smiled, nodded, and with a swift leaning forward of a supple body that made her look like the figurehead of a vessel, accosted her in a deep, rather attractive voice.

"I say! Are you alone today? So am I. Have your lunch at my table, won't you?"

"Oh! thank you, Mrs. Cartwright; I'd like to," said the girl, pleased. She took the chair opposite.

Mrs. Cartwright, who had been at the hotel for some days before the Howel-Joneses had arrived, was the widow of an Indian Army officer, the mother of two boys now at school in England, and a journalist under several names.

This was why, when she said she was as hungry as a hunter because she had been working like a nigger all the morning, Olwen asked her, with a shy smile, "Were you being 'Miss Claudia Crane' or the 'Wanderer through Western France'?"

"For a change, neither," returned Mrs. Cartwright cheerfully over the omelette which the frail little Italian waiter had brought to her. "I actually went back to being 'Domestica' and I turned out two thousand words of wisdom on ration-recipes—just for the pleasure of charging them eight times what my price used to be when I navvied for that paper regularly. What have you been doing—taking down sheaves of notes from that wonderful-looking old Welsh Nationalist, your uncle?"

The Professor's niece, as she answered that she had done nothing but tidy up and answer letters, was still absorbed by the thought of that epoch-making letter that she had read before she had even seen that it had not been left there for her to copy with the others. Her whole being was so taken up by the memory of what the letter had claimed for the powers of that hidden packet (now drawing warmth from the softness of her breast where it lay) that she only had half an ear for the talk of the woman opposite to her.

The Disturbing Charm.... 

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