“And how have you slept?” she said, extending me a plump hand glittering with rings.  “We were afraid that perhaps you were a little overtired last night, as you went off to bed in the middle of the singing.  Capital, wasn’t it?  Mr. Tucker is so very funny, and never in the least vulgar with his jokes!  Now some comic singers really forget that there are girls in the room.—­(Lily, my love, just go and see if your uncle is coming down).—­I assure you, Mr. Carew, I was staying in a country house last year—­mind, I give no names—­where the songs were only fit for a music-hall!  It’s perfectly true; even George said it made him feel quite red to hear such things in a drawing-room.  But, as I was saying, Mr. Tucker is so different; such genuine humour, you know!”

It is impossible to conjecture how long my amiable hostess might have rippled on in this strain if our conversation had not been interrupted by the entry of Miss Latouche.

“You have been introduced?” whispered Mrs. Maitland; and, without waiting for an answer, she called out merrily:  “My dear Irene, you must positively come and entertain Mr. Carew.  He will give up early rising if he finds that it is always to mean a tete-a-tete with an old woman!”

To my intense astonishment, Miss Latouche replied in the same jesting tone, and taking the vacant seat next mine began at once to talk in the most friendly way imaginable.  Not a trace of eccentricity was perceptible in her manner.  She was merely a handsome girl, with a strong vein of originality.  I began to doubt the evidence of my senses.  Surely I must have been labouring under some hallucination the previous night.  It was almost easier to believe that I had been the dupe of a portentous nightmare than that this charming girl should have enacted such a strange part.

Before the end of breakfast I was certain that I had taken a very exaggerated view of the situation.  It would be a pity to cut short a pleasant visit and risk offending some of my oldest friends on such purely fanciful grounds.  Besides, I just remembered that I had given my cook a holiday and that if I went home I should be dependent on the culinary skill of a charwoman.  This last consideration determined me.  I settled to stay.

Nothing in Miss Latouche’s behaviour led me to regret my decision.  On the contrary, at the end of a few days we were firm friends.  The better I knew her the greater became my admiration of her beauty and talents; and, without vanity, I think I may say that she distinctly preferred me to the other guests, who were mostly very ordinary types of modern young men.  The extraordinary impressions of the first evening had entirely faded from my mind, when they were suddenly revived in all their intensity by the following incident.