Mona went up-stairs as she read it.

"Lady Munro " was the name on the card; an address in Gloucester Place, Portman Square, was scrawled in the corner; and on the back in pencil

"So sorry to miss you. You must dine with us without fail on Friday at eight. No refusal."

A pleased smile crossed Mona's face.

"She is spoiling the story," she said. Then the smile was chased away by a frown.

"If only the story had not spoiled itself!"

And then she bethought herself of the letter she had posted.

CHAPTER IV.

SIR DOUGLAS.

When Friday evening came, Mona took a curious pleasure in making the very most of herself.

She knew, as well as any outsider could have told her, that her present depression and apathy were but the measure of the passionate enthusiasm with which she had lived the life of her choice; and yet it was inevitable that for the time she should look at life wholly on the shadowed side. Past and future seemed alike gloomy and forbidding-"Grau, grau, gleichgültig grau"-and the eager, unconscious protest of youth against such a destiny, took the form of a resolution to enjoy to the utmost this glimpse of brightness and colour. She would forget all but the present; new surroundings should find her for the moment a new being.

When she reached Gloucester Place, Lady Munro and her daughter were alone in the drawing-room.

Lady Munro was one of those people who make a marked impress on their material surroundings. The rooms in which

she lived quickly became, as it were, a part of herself, which her friends could not fail to recognise as such.

Eastern rugs and draperies clothed the conventional London sitting-room; luxuriant, tropical-looking plants were grouped in corners, great sensuous roses lolled in Indian bowls, and a few rich quaint lamps cast a mellow glow across the twilight of the room.

"Why, Mona, can it really be you?" Lady Munro rose from her lounge, and kissed her niece affectionately on both cheeks. For a moment Mona could scarcely find words. She was keenly susceptible at all times to the beauty of luxury, and the very atmosphere of this room called up with irresistible force forgotten memories of childhood. The touch of this gracious woman's lips, the sound of her voice, the soft froufrou of her gown, all gave Mona a sense of exquisite physical pleasure. Lady Munro was not, strictly speaking, a beautiful woman; but a subtle grace, a subtle fascination, a subtle perfume were part of her very being. She was worshipped by all the men who knew her, but the most cynical of her husband's friends could not deny that she was no whit less charming in her intercourse with her own sex than she was with them. She was not brilliant; she was not fast; she was simply herself.

"This is my daughter Evelyn," she said; and she laid her hand on a sweet, quiet, overgrown English schoolgirl-one of those curious chrysalis beings whom a few months of Anglo-Indian society transform from a child into a finished woman of the world.

"I expect my husband every moment. meet you."

He is longing to

Evelyn slowly raised her blue eyes, looked quietly at her mother for a moment, and let them fall again without the smallest change of expression. In fact, Lady Munro's remark was a graceful modification of the truth. Munro was nothing if not a man of the world. points of a wine, and he knew the points of a horse; but above all he flattered himself that he knew the points of a

Sir Douglas He knew the

woman. He had made a study of them all his life, and he believed, perhaps rightly, that he could read them like an open book. "Sweet seventeen" was at a cruel disadvantage in his hands, if indeed he exerted himself to speak to her at all. The genus Medical Woman was not as yet included in his collection, but he had heard of it, and had classified it in his own mind as a useful but uninteresting hybrid, which could not strictly be called a woman at all. In the sense, therefore, in which a lukewarm entomologist "longs to meet" the rare but ugly beetle which he believes will complete his cabinet, Sir Douglas Munro was "longing" to make the acquaintance of Mona Maclean.

The new beetle certainly took him by surprise when he came in a minute later.

"Mona!" he replied to his wife's introduction; "Mona Maclean the doctor?"

Mona laughed as she rose, and took his proffered hand. "Far from it," she said. "In the vacation I try to forget that I am even the makings of one."

She looked almost handsome as she stood there in the soft light of the room. Lady Munro forgot that her niece was a medical student, and experienced a distinct sense of pride and proprietorship. No ordinary modiste, she felt sure, had arranged those folds of soft grey crape, and the dash of glowing crimson geraniums on the shoulder was the touch of an artist.

"Mona is the image of her mother," she said.

"Ye-e-s," said Sir Douglas, availing himself of his wife's relationship to look at Mona very frankly. "She reminds me a good deal of what you were at her age."

"Nonsense!" said Mona hastily.

used to flattery."

"To receiving or to paying it?"

"Remember I am not

"To neither;" and she turned a look of very honest and almost childlike admiration on her aunt.

Sir Douglas looked pleased, although he himself had long ceased to pay his wife compliments.

"There's a great deal of your father in your face, too," he said. "You have got his mouth. Ah, he was a good fellow ! I could tell you many a story of our Indian life—a man in a thousand!"

"You could tell me nothing I should more dearly like to hear," said Mona, with eager interest.

"Ah, well-some day, some day."

A native servant announced dinner, and Sir Douglas gave Mona his arm.

"What! another scene from the 'Arabian Nights'?" she said as they entered the dining-room. "It is clear that a very wonderful genius presides over your household."

"You are going to have an Indian dinner, too," said Lady Munro. "Nubboo makes all the entrées and soups and sauces. He is worth half-a-dozen English servants."

Mona looked up at the dark bearded face under the voluminous white turban, but she could not tell whether Nubboo had heard the remark. All the philosophy of Buddh might lie behind those sad impenetrable eyes, or he might be thinking merely of the entrées; it was impossible to say. If the whole occasion had not seemed to her, as she said, a bit out of the Arabian Nights,' she would have thought it sacrilege that a man with such a face should be employed in so trivial an occupation as waiting at table.

"When I look at Nubboo I can almost believe myself a baby again," she said. "He seems like a bit of my dream

world."

The feeblest ghost of a smile flitted across the man's face, as he moved noiselessly from place to place.

"It must be a dream-world," laughed her aunt. "You cannot remember much of that!"

"I don't;" and Mona sighed.

Lady Munro and Mona kept the ball going between them during dinner. Evelyn only spoke now and then, to tone down one of her mother's most piquant and highly coloured remarks; and she did this with a hidden sense of humour

B

which never rose to the surface in her face. Sir Douglas spoke as much as courtesy absolutely demanded, but no more. The new beetle was evidently perplexing him profoundly.

Lady Munro's feeling for her niece was one of mingled pride, affection, disgust, and fear-disgust for the life-work she had chosen, fear of her supposed "cleverness." Lady Munro despised learned women, but she was not at all willing that they should despise her. She exerted herself. to talk well, but even Mona's evident admiration could not put her quite at her ease.

"How is it we have seen so little of you, Mona?" she said, when they had left Sir Douglas to his wine. "Where were you when we were last at home?"

"In Germany, I suppose. I went there for three years after I left school."

"To study music?"

"Both music and painting in a small way."

"You wonderful girl! Then you are a musician?" "Gott bewahre !" burst from Mona involuntarily. "My musical friends thought me a Turner, and my artistic friends thought me a Rubinstein; from which you may gather the truth, that I had no real gift for either."

66 So you say! I expect you are an 'Admirable Crichton."" "If that be a euphemism for 'Jack-of-all-trades and master of none,' I suppose I am-alas!"

"And does Homer never nod? Do you never amuse yourself like other girls?"

"I am afraid I must not allow you to call me a girl. I believe you have my grandmother's Family Bible. Yes, indeed, Homer nods a great deal more than is consistent with his lofty calling. I am an epicure in frivolling." "In what?"

"Forgive my school slang! It means that I indulge quite freely enough in concerts, theatres, and in picture-galleries— not to say shop-windows."

"You don't mean to say that you care for shop-windows?"