brains ever since I had left the village inn. I took down the old address-book used by my predecessor, but there was no entry there. No, I felt somehow that I had heard the name outside my connexion with the family, but where, or in what circumstances, I could not for the life of me remember.

My hands were clasped behind my head, and with my work cast aside, I was smoking vigorously, when there came a low tap at the door, and in response to my permission to enter, Lady Lolita came forward gaily, a sweet almost girlish figure in her cream dinner-gown girdled with turquoise blue, exclaiming—

“Mr Woodhouse, I do wish you would do me a favour, would you?”

“Most certainly,” I exclaimed, springing quickly to my feet. “What is it?”

“I want you to copy out something for me, will you?” And seating herself at my writing-table, she took up a pen and scribbled some lines.

Her gown suited her to perfection, the low-cut bodice revealing her white throat, around which sparkled a splendid necklet of diamonds that flashed beneath my lamp with a thousand fires. Upon her white wrist was a quaint Chinese bracelet cut from a solid piece of bright green stone.

Her face was perfect in its symmetry, and her finely-chiselled features were almost an exact reproduction of those of Lady Mary Sibberton in Sir Joshua’s picture in the gallery above. The loveliness of the Sibberton women had been proverbial back in the Jacobean and Georgian days, and assuredly Lady Lolita inherited the distinctive beauty of the female members of the family. The delicately-moulded cheeks, the pointed chin, the sweet, well-formed mouth, the even set of pearly teeth, the wealth of auburn hair and the laughing blue eyes so full of mischief and merriment rendered her peerless among women, while her wit and easy-going good-humour endeared her to all, rich and poor alike.

As I stood by, watching her bent head beneath the lamplight, I saw that although she tried to write, her small white hand trembled so that the attempt was by no means successful. She seemed nervous and upset, for I now noticed for the first time that her breast rose and fell quickly beneath her laces, and that she was trying in vain to repress a wild tumult of agitation that raged within her.

“No,” she cried, throwing down the pen and looking up at me, “I can’t write. I—” And she stopped without concluding her sentence, fixing her beautiful eyes upon me. She was magnificent. That look of hers was surely sufficient to make any man’s head reel.

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