Suddenly, however, it struck me that de Mersch was talking at me; that he had by the merest shade raised his intonation.  He was dilating upon the immense international value of the proposed Trans-Greenland Railway.  Its importance to British trade was indisputable; even the opposition had no serious arguments to offer.  It was the obvious duty of the British Government to give the financial guarantee.  He would not insist upon the moral aspect of the work—­it was unnecessary.  Progress, improvement, civilisation, a little less evil in the world—­more light!  It was our duty not to count the cost of humanising a lower race.  Besides, the thing would pay like another Suez Canal.  Its terminus and the British coaling station would be on the west coast of the island....  I knew the man was talking at me—­I wondered why.

Suddenly he turned his glowing countenance full upon me.

“I think I must have met a member of your family,” he said.  The solution occurred to me.  I was a journalist, he a person interested in a railway that he wished the Government to back in some way or another.  His attempts to capture my suffrage no longer astonished me.  I murmured: 

“Indeed!”

“In Paris—­Mrs. Etchingham Granger,” he said.

I said, “Oh, yes.”

Miss Churchill came to the rescue.

“The Duc de Mersch means our friend, your aunt,” she explained.  I had an unpleasant sensation.  Through fronds of asparagus fern I caught the eyes of Gurnard fixed upon me as though something had drawn his attention.  I returned his glance, tried to make his face out.  It had nothing distinctive in its half-hidden pallid oval; nothing that one could seize upon.  But it gave the impression of never having seen the light of day, of never having had the sun upon it.  But the conviction that I had aroused his attention disturbed me.  What could the man know about me?  I seemed to feel his glance bore through the irises of my eyes into the back of my skull.  The feeling was almost physical; it was as if some incredibly concentrant reflector had been turned upon me.  Then the eyelids dropped over the metallic rings beneath them.  Miss Churchill continued to explain.

“She has started a sort of Salon des Causes Perdues in the Faubourg Saint Germain.”  She was recording the vagaries of my aunt.  The Duc laughed.

“Ah, yes,” he said, “what a menagerie—­Carlists, and Orleanists, and Papal Blacks.  I wonder she has not held a bazaar in favour of your White Rose League.”

“Ah, yes,” I echoed, “I have heard that she was mad about the divine right of kings.”

Miss Churchill rose, as ladies rise at the end of a dinner.  I followed her out of the room, in obedience to some minute signal.

We were on the best of terms—­we two.  She mothered me, as she mothered everybody not beneath contempt or above a certain age.  I liked her immensely—­the masterful, absorbed, brown lady.  As she walked up the stairs, she said, in half apology for withdrawing me.