The Messenger

at I'm afraid of is that some day you'll be wanting to carry t

eyes, "you mean you're afraid I may just chance to be honest in

o have Eton and Balliol in the past, a present as unpaid, private secretary to a member of his Majesty's Government, and a future in which the private secretary himself would belong to offic

with evident dissatisfaction the figure of a woman who had appeared an instant over the sand-dunes a

always hanging about for?"

ou didn'

retorted Napier, "I

lf clubs (it was against his principles to employ a caddie) and trudged on at the side of

es," Julian said, "but I've seen she

apier retorted. "But if it we

urse y

e reason is I'm the only person in the hous

at first for j

" Napier wagged his head i

nce I got back," Julian went on, "or e

u?" Napier asked

"I haven't understood her

brows-"did you ever know a person that nothing you know about them seems

had consented to superintend the studies and to share the recreations of "that handful," Madge McIntyre, aged sixteen? This girl, with the boyish face and boyish tastes and boyish clothes (whose mane of flaming hair had helped to fasten on her the nickname of Wildfire McIntyre), Julian already knew slightly as the only and much-spoiled daughter of Napier's chief. Sir William McIntyre, K. C. B., adviser to the Admiralty and laird of Kirklamont, had been the notable chairman of endle

summer when Madge, driving along the coast road, came in sight of Glenfallon Castle, and pulled up her pony w

per and azurite, spilled haphazard into the sea-clear away to that great gray expanse miscalled by the new governess the German Ocean. Nobody had lived at Glenfallon as long

staring at them," Mis

ad let fall. Madge seized them with an impat

staring into a stranger's tennis co

g at one. You ca

nto the road. Before Miss Gayne could remonstrate, Madge

young lady. He was a very good specimen of fair, broad-shouldered, blunt-fe

xpecting him?"

more pleased to see you." He made his quick little bow and turned

oring Miss Gayne's hurried app

? Have you bou

quiet might do their father some good. He hadn't been

"The quiet is the very thing for our father-but for us it may become a lit

ge did not long leave a

ed on at home, but poor Mi

d by some one recommended by, or at least through, thes

enerally, they had with Madge. Everybody seemed to like them. Lady McIntyre liked

re's graciousness that "'so hoped to make your father's acquaintance.'" The Pforzheims

s out yesterday evening,

very painful. He can't bear the least light. So he g

tion. 'Doesn't it sound,' she appealed to Sir William, 'extremely like the kind of insomnia Lord G

ey'd be eternally grateful if she would only get Lord Grantbury's prescription. But Lady

he consciousness of being seen, of having to acknowledge recognition, or even of knowing your label was being clapped on your back-all that was disturbing in certain states of health. "'So he has himself driven out, they say, about eleven o'clock at night in a sixty-horsepower car, and goes whizzing along lonely roads where there's no fear of police traps, as h

that unfortunately his father had

range!' said

dropped his eyes and compressed his full lips-'

across his eyes-'our father finds the water soothing. After all, Carl, swif

ss,' said La

n a flutter. The poor young men's anxiety was most touching! Especially Carl's. Lady McIntyre, according to Napier, doted on Carl. He wasn't so taken up by his filial preoccupations either, that he couldn't sympathize with the anxiety of a mo

me,' Lady McIntyre said with her infantile candor, 'that we've never tried a Germa

mustache. Mr. Pforzheim promised to consult h

y who was at that moment in London, on her way home f

said, when she came back from interviewing the

twenty-five instead of fifteen. That's how the von Schwarzenberg found her, neglecting lessons, ignoring laws, living at the theater, figuring at her father's official parties, sitting up till all hours of the night, smoking ciga

atched the t

salary twice." She had subdued every

ope?" Julian

have you got against me, Mr. Napier?' she said. 'You don't like me.' It took me so by surprise, I stammered: 'I?...