At the last step she raised her eyelids, treated us to an exhibition of teeth as dazzling as Mr. Blunt’s and looking even stronger; and indeed, as she approached us she brought home to our hearts (but after all I am speaking only for myself) a vivid sense of her physical perfection in beauty of limb and balance of nerves, and not so much of grace, probably, as of absolute harmony.

She said to us, “I am sorry I kept you waiting.”  Her voice was low pitched, penetrating, and of the most seductive gentleness.  She offered her hand to Mills very frankly as to an old friend.  Within the extraordinarily wide sleeve, lined with black silk, I could see the arm, very white, with a pearly gleam in the shadow.  But to me she extended her hand with a slight stiffening, as it were a recoil of her person, combined with an extremely straight glance.  It was a finely shaped, capable hand.  I bowed over it, and we just touched fingers.  I did not look then at her face.

Next moment she caught sight of some envelopes lying on the round marble-topped table in the middle of the hall.  She seized one of them with a wonderfully quick, almost feline, movement and tore it open, saying to us, “Excuse me, I must . . .  Do go into the dining-room.  Captain Blunt, show the way.”

Her widened eyes stared at the paper.  Mr. Blunt threw one of the doors open, but before we passed through it we heard a petulant exclamation accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a laugh which had in it a note of contempt.

The door closed behind us; we had been abandoned by Mr. Blunt.  He had remained on the other side, possibly to soothe.  The room in which we found ourselves was long like a gallery and ended in a rotunda with many windows.  It was long enough for two fireplaces of red polished granite.  A table laid out for four occupied very little space.  The floor inlaid in two kinds of wood in a bizarre pattern was highly waxed, reflecting objects like still water.

Before very long Dona Rita and Blunt rejoined us and we sat down around the table; but before we could begin to talk a dramatically sudden ring at the front door stilled our incipient animation.  Dona Rita looked at us all in turn, with surprise and, as it were, with suspicion.  “How did he know I was here?” she whispered after looking at the card which was brought to her.  She passed it to Blunt, who passed it to Mills, who made a faint grimace, dropped it on the table-cloth, and only whispered to me, “A journalist from Paris.”

“He has run me to earth,” said Dona Rita.  “One would bargain for peace against hard cash if these fellows weren’t always ready to snatch at one’s very soul with the other hand.  It frightens me.”

Her voice floated mysterious and penetrating from her lips, which moved very little.  Mills was watching her with sympathetic curiosity.  Mr. Blunt muttered:  “Better not make the brute angry.”  For a moment Dona Rita’s face, with its narrow eyes, its wide brow, and high cheek bones, became very still; then her colour was a little heightened.  “Oh,” she said softly, “let him come in.  He would be really dangerous if he had a mind—­you know,” she said to Mills.