Then the door opened again, and a dark little man, obviously of French persuasion, came into the room looking rather dreamy and preoccupied; but when he saw Katharine he returned to real life, and his face broke out into a radiant smile.

"Mon Dieu!" he cried. "Mademoiselle have re[36]turned to us. Ah, le climat detestable of England have become a beautiful, French printemps. The fogs is gone. My dead hearts is alive. And Mademoiselle have made the miracle."

[36]

"You see that you have come back to faithful admirers, Kath," Ronald said, laughing.

"I see that I have come back to faithful flatterers," Katharine answered, as she stood in their midst laughing and shaking hands with them repeatedly. "But it is all delightful, and I feel years younger at being amongst my old friends. How many years have we known each other? Isn't it ten?"

"Ten years, five months," said Herr Edelhart, accurately.

"Onze, onze," said Monsieur Gervais.

"Always, always!" cried the Italian, waving his arms about in dismissal of time, and then dancing a sort of war-dance round the room.

"Ah, ha, we have not been so gay since the Signorina was cruel enough to leave us," he cried. "Tra, la, la, tra, la, la!"

"Look here, Luigi, we must manage to behave ourselves somehow," said Ronald, catching hold of the little Italian. "For there is a stranger coming to-night, and he will think we are all mad."

"A stranger," they cried, "and on our last night?"

"Oh, hang it all," said Ronald, laughing, "it can't be our last night."

"Bravo, bravissimo!" they cried.

And Herr Edelhart whispered to Katharine:

"Fräulein has come home, and 'brother' is coming back to his senses."

[37]

[37]

"Who is the stranger?" Katharine asked. "And how dare he intrude on us at such a moment?"

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