across the window. To the left of the door was a long, low walnut-wood chest. With an inward tremor she told herself that it was like a coffin.

And then, all at once, she remembered everything! This was her bedroom at La Solitude—and yesterday had been the beginning of what ought to be quite an exciting and interesting experience.

All that had happened last evening came back to her with a rush. Her introduction to that rather rough Mr. George Ponting, who had yet been so kindly, so respectful, in his manner to her. She smiled and sighed a little as she thought of how hurt he had been at her refusing the beautiful little gold box. What sort of girl would get that box? she wondered.

Then she went over her queer experience of last night, or was it early this morning? It did not seem quite so real now as it had been then. Perhaps she had only fancied that one of the long drawing-room windows had been opened in the night?

She began to wonder at what time M. Popeau and Captain Stuart would come to-day. She did hope Countess Polda and her new friends would get on together. Somehow she doubted it—they were so very different!

She jumped up and pulled open the curtains. What a pity this room had only a view of the small courtyard below 49and of the bare hillside above! But she was not likely to spend much time in her bedroom.

49

During the last two years Lily had always got up extremely early because of her war work. She turned towards the travelling clock which she had put on the mantelpiece. Ten o’clock? Impossible! It must have stopped last night—but no, it was ticking away as usual. How dreadful that she should have so overslept herself! Dreadful, and yet, after all, natural, after all those days of travel.

And then she looked at the glass, the contents of which she had not drunk the night before. There was a white sediment at the bottom of the water. She told herself that perhaps the one thing in common between The Nest and La Solitude was that they were both built on chalk.

She wondered where the bathroom could be. Putting on her dressing-gown, she opened her bedroom door. The passage was full of sunlight—a curious contrast to her room.

The only open door besides her own was that just opposite. She peeped into it. It was a little empty slip of a room. It had seemed so big last night in the 

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