"Céline Leroque, at your service; maid-in-waiting to Miss Arthur, of Oakley."
Doctor Vaughan laughed.
"Well, won't you shake hands with an American of no special importance, Céline Leroque?"
She placed her hand in his and then drew forward a chair.
"I hope you found no difficulty in getting out to-night?" he said, sitting down and looking at her with a half-amused, half-grave countenance.
"None whatever; I have been suffering with a sick-headache all day."
"And you can get in again unseen?"
"Easily; in the evening the servants are all below stairs."
"But what an odd disguise! Do they never question your blue glasses?"
"Not half so much as they would question the eyes without them. They believe my eyes were ruined by close application to fine needle-work. And then—" she pushed up the glasses a trifle, and he saw that the eyelid, and a line underneath the eye, were artistically rouged—"they all acknowledge that my eyes look very weak."