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“Were you looking for Miss Langdon?” Even now she could see the courteous, grave young face soften as he turned quickly toward her, baring his dark head with that swift foreign grace that turns our perfunctory habits into something like a ritual.

“But no,” he had said gently, “I was looking for you, Miss Abbott.”

“Now will you please tell me how in the world you knew that I was Miss Abbott?”

And he had smiled with his lips, not his eyes.

“I should be dull indeed if that I did not know. I am Maurice Laurent, Miss Abbott.”

And “Oh,” she had cried joyously, “Liane’s Maurice!”

“But yes—Liane’s Maurice. They are not here, the others? Madame Langdon, the little Miss Rosemary?”

“No, they’ve gone to some parish fair, and I’ve been wicked and stayed home. Won’t you sit down and talk to me? Please!”

“Miss Abbott, it is not to you that I must talk. What I have to say is indeed most difficult, and it is to Jeremy’s Janie that I would say it. May I, then?”

It had seemed to Jeremy’s Janie that the voice in which she answered him came from a great distance, but she never took her eyes from the grave and vivid face.