“And where was her lord and master?”

“In Germany; I have never seen him.”

“How did your aunt come across him?”

“In Hong Kong, of all places!  She was married at eighteen to a young officer; they ran away, and I believe grandpa never forgave her.  He was a General, a strict old martinet, and she was his favourite daughter.  After they had been married a couple of years, Aunt Flora’s husband was killed in an accident and she was left rather badly off.  People out there were very kind to her.  She had been hurt in the accident and was laid up for months.  Then this rich German asked her to marry him, and as she was reluctant to return home and face grandpa, she said ‘Yes.’  But perhaps it was love match number two.”

“Yes, perhaps it was.”

“That all happened twenty years ago, and since then Aunt Flora has made her home in the East—­China, the Straits Settlements and Burma.  You see, her friends and her interests are mostly out there.  She and mother always write to one another; we do her commissions in London, and she sends us Burmese silks and umbrellas and curry stuff; but we were immensely surprised when, without any little hints or preparations, Uncle Karl wrote and invited me to pay them a long visit—­and so here I am!  I do hope I shan’t be a fish out of water.  I’ve never been accustomed to living with wealthy people, and, I’m told that Uncle Karl is immensely rich.”

“You need not consider that a drawback.  It is better than being immensely poor—­for instance, like myself.”

“You don’t look poor.”

She smiled as she glanced at his well-cut suit and admirable brown shoes.

“I’m not exactly a whining beggar, selling boot laces and matches, but I am uncommonly glad to have got this job, which brings me in about four hundred a year.  In London I was a clerk at less than half, and here is my chance to see the world—­and I’m bound to make the most of it.”

“Mrs. Milward said you were to have gone into the Army.”

“Yes, but if you can’t get what you like, you must like what you can get,” was the philosophic rejoinder.

“I suppose your people were very sorry to part with you.  My poor mother cried for nearly three days; my sister, I know, will miss me dreadfully.  This is not sheer vanity, as you might suppose, but we have always done things together—­and there is only a year between us.”

“Well, my mother did not cry much, and I have no sisters to mourn for me.”

“No sisters,” she echoed, as if the fact struck hot as unusual.

“No, nor brothers either—­only cousins.”

“Sometimes they do just as well; are they pretty?”

“No,” he answered rather curtly, as Cossie’s round complacent face rose before his mental eye.

After a short pause he changed the topic and asked: 

“Do you ride, Miss Leigh?”

“Yes, but not since we’ve come to London; I love riding.  In the country, in father’s lifetime, I rode a cob—­he went in the cart, too; he was such a dear, but very tricky; once or twice he ran away with me; I didn’t tell father, because I knew I’d never again be allowed to ride alone, and I do enjoy riding by myself.”