"I say she was a young lady, while you will observe I alluded only just now to a girl talking to a young man on the tennis-court. There was that difference. Without giving one any reason for supposing she was married, this one conveyed a subtle impression of being the mistress of the house. She was dark, athletic, simply dressed in black, and extremely plain.
"'Father will be back from the city at half-past four,' she said, when I had explained my errand. 'I am so sorry you will have to wait. You will stay to dinner, of course.'
"I said I did not know if I should stay to dinner as a matter of course, but I thanked her. We drifted into conversation and she gave a very clever impression of being a thorough woman of the world. She was not, of course. She was one of those unfortunate beings who are trained in all the arts of life and who become adepts in all those accomplishments which men take entirely for granted, and who are permitted to grow up imagining men are paladins. And when they marry they experience a shock from which they never recover. Being married is such a different affair from looking after your father's house. When I mentioned my errand, she said her mother and the widowed aunt were at Torquay. Her plain features were suffused with emotion when she mentioned the death of her uncle. She had been his favourite niece. He always paid them a brief visit when he came to London. Very brief. He had a great many people to see in town. Only last year he had given her a set of pearls. And Madame Kinaitsky was so young—it was tragic. The pater had gone over and met her in Paris and she would live with them in future. She stopped in the middle of this and looked at me.
"'You met her, of course, out there?' she asked.
"'Oh, dear no,' I said. "I am only a very casual acquaintance, you understand. I happened to be on the spot, and the very fact that I was not a regular friend gave your uncle the idea that his papers, whatever they are, would be safer with me. I was only too pleased to be of service. You see,' I went on, 'your uncle knew a friend of mine, and so....
"'A friend of yours?' she queried.
"'Yes, a business friend. Your uncle helped him and his daughter. It was the daughter I knew particularly.'
"'Was she nice?' she demanded, eagerly. 'I mean, was she worthy of his help? He was so good. He helped everybody. There is an orphanage in Saloniki which he supported—oh, most generously. And he asked nothing in return. Oh!' she exclaimed, 'when I think of his life, always thinking of others and doing good, and how at last he found happiness for himself, and then this....' and she gazed out of the window at the old gentleman, who was in trouble with his yacht, which had capsized just beyond walking-stick reach. 'It was like him to trust a stranger,' she murmured.
"'He was good enough to make use of me because I was an Englishman,' I replied.
"'And that was like him, too,' she returned, kindling again. 'It was a great grief to him that business prevented him from living with us here in Hampstead. He loved the English ways. He used to say in joke that he would certainly marry an English wife if he could induce any of them to marry him. But of course he met his fate. He wrote hoping we would love her. We shall do that, of course, but——' she looked out again at the old gentleman who had found a small boy volunteer to paddle out, bare-legged, to salve the yacht.