just as some other men—ah, yes!—were all Charm.

Here Mrs. Cartwright, still seeming to look another way, followed the young girl's glance as it turned again to the objective that it first had sought—to the two empty places at the long table.

"Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas have gone into Bordeaux for the day," commented Mrs. Cartwright. "I hope they'll bring me back the fountain-pen ink and the 'Vie Parisienne,' and the brown darning silk that I commissioned them to get——" and here, quickly, she turned away as if to gaze out of the window at the little motor-boat that was making its way up the lagoon, where the tide was high, to the wooden pier. Actually, her movement was to avoid seeming to stare at the face of the girl before her, where Consciousness had again flamed out into a live and lovely red.

"So that's it ..." she thought.

"I wish I didn't blush!" Olwen Howel-Jones was scolding herself angrily. "I am a little idiot to blush at the sound of the man's name! Nobody in the whole world thinks of doing such a thing nowadays; it's like wearing your hat on the back of your head! Yet here I am, going on like this as if it were Eighteen Seventeen! I do wish to goodness I had another sort of skin. Mrs. Cartwright might easily have thought——!"

But Mrs. Cartwright was talking pleasantly on about the journey to Bordeaux; about the forest of Les Pins, the air of it....

"Such a becoming place, too," she laughed. "Makes you feel well; look well. May I make a personal remark, Miss Howel-Jones? You yourself are getting twice as pretty as when you came here."

"Oh, no," protested the enraptured girl. "No one could—no one has ever called me pretty!"

"No? But they will. Perhaps you are only just growing up to it," said Mrs. Cartwright with a very kind glance into the face opposite to her. "So many people make a virtue of blurting out unpleasant truths; why shouldn't one tell the truths that aren't unpleasant? Today (I saw it when you came in) you are quite lovely. You look as if a charm had touched you."

Little Olwen's whole heart went suddenly out in emotion and gratitude towards the woman who had said this thing.

Only the very young can realize how much they mean—the very first compliments to the very young girl! Especially to the very young girl in Love; she who feels the special need of beauty, 

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