'Why,' she inquired, with dangerous suavity, 'why are you so anxious to stay in Paris? It is no better than London in winter.'

Mrs. Huston shrugged her shoulders with childlike inconsequence. It was rather hard to expect her to have definite reasons ready for production.

'Oh, I don't know,' she answered. 'It would be a nice change. I think we would all find a place like Biarritz or Arcachon intolerably slow. We want taking out of ourselves.'

Mrs. Wylie nodded in a moderately sympathetic way. The three ladies knew that Theodore Trist was in Paris, and Mrs. Wylie, without looking in Brenda's direction, had seen a change come over the girl's face at the mention of the word. A singular change it was for so young a face—rather unpleasant, too, in its effect. For a moment her features appeared to contract, and a gray set look came into her eyes. This singular effect was slowly fading when Alice again mentioned Paris, and instantaneously the apathetic chill seemed to spread over Brenda's being again.

'I hate Paris in winter!' said Mrs. Wylie decisively. 'The wind is cutting, the streets are crowded with excited women carrying larger parcels, and more of them, than their limbs were intended to carry, and altogether it is horrible. We will stay one night if you like, but not more. In coming back we can stop perhaps. Besides ... Alice, I do not think it would do for you to be seen in Paris just now.'

Alice did not meet her friend's gaze. There was an unpleasant silence of some moments' duration, and then she murmured in a prettily petulant way:

'It is rather hard that I should be expected to bury myself alive.'

In this wise it was settled, and the three ladies passed through Paris without seeing aught of the cosmopolitan journalist, whose presence in the French capital was a matter of public discussion. Some papers even went so far as to refer to it as the immediate precursor of an outbreak of hostilities between France and Germany, and took the opportunity of reminding the citizens that every Frenchman thirsted for the gory cup of vengeance.

Mrs. Wylie was fully aware of the fact that had Theodore Trist so desired, he would have managed to see them somehow in passing; but she opined that he would not do so, and in this she was right. He actually knew that they were in Paris, but avoided them with an ease which showed his intimate acquaintance with the ways of the French capital.

Alice Huston made no attempt to disguise her contempt for Bordeaux, where a halt of one night was necessary, and arrived at mid-day at Arcachon with the full intention of disliking the place heartily. Personally, I have no interest in the town, not holding any shares in the Casino, nor claiming relationship with persons keeping hotels there; but it shall always be my honest endeavour to treat people and places alike with justice. There is no denying the fact that certain parts of the little French watering-place, more especially towards La Teste, are not savoury of odour; but Alice was hardly justified in the use of the word 'disgusting' in this respect. It happened to be blowing steadily from the westward, and, in consequence, the air was heavy with the distant continuous roar of Atlantic breakers surging on to the deserted shore across the Bassin.