“Mr. Le Breton!” Mr. MacNairn said in a rather startled tone.  “The girl with her hand in his arm?”

“Yes.  You see how fair she is,” I answered.

“And she has that transparent look.  It is so lovely.  Don’t you think so?  She is one of the White People.”

He stood very still, looking across the flowers at the group.  There was a singular interest and intensity in his expression.  He watched the pair silently for a whole minute, I think.

“Ye-es,” he said, slowly, at last, “I do see what you mean—­and it is lovely.  I don’t seem to know her well.  She must be a new friend of my mother’s.  So she is one of the White People?”

“She looks like a white iris herself, doesn’t she?” I said.  “Now you know.”

“Yes; now I know,” he answered.

I asked Mrs. MacNairn later who the girl was, but she didn’t seem to recognize my description of her.  Mr. Le Breton had gone away by that time, and so had the girl herself.

“The tall, very fair one in the misty, pale-gray dress,” I said.  “She was near Mr. Le Breton when he was looking at the iris-bed.  You were cutting some roses only a few yards away from her.  That very fair girl?”

Mrs. MacNairn paused a moment and looked puzzled.

“Mildred Keith is fair,” she reflected, “but she was not there then.  I don’t recall seeing a girl.  I was cutting some buds for Mrs. Anstruther.  I—­” She paused again and turned toward her son, who was standing watching us.  I saw their eyes meet in a rather arrested way.

“It was not Mildred Keith,” he said.  “Miss Muircarrie is inquiring because this girl was one of those she calls the White People.  She was not any one I had seen here before.”

There was a second’s silence before Mrs. MacNairn smilingly gave me one of her light, thrilling touches on my arm.

“Ah!  I remember,” she said.  “Hector told me about the White People.  He rather fancied I might be one.”

I am afraid I rather stared at her as I slowly shook my head.  You see she was almost one, but not quite.

“I was so busy with my roses that I did not notice who was standing near Mr. Le Breton,” she said.  “Perhaps it was Anabel Mere.  She is a more transparent sort of girl than Mildred, and she is more blond.  And you don’t know her, Hector?  I dare say it was she.”

CHAPTER VI

I remained in London several weeks.  I stayed because the MacNairns were so good to me.  I could not have told any one how I loved Mrs. MacNairn, and how different everything seemed when I was with her.  I was never shy when we were together.  There seemed to be no such thing as shyness in the world.  I was not shy with Mr. MacNairn, either.  After I had sat under the big apple-tree boughs in the walled garden a few times I realized that I had begun to belong to somebody.  Those two marvelous people cared for me in that way—­in a way that made me feel as if I were a real girl, not merely a queer little awkward ghost in a far-away castle which nobody wanted to visit because it was so dull and desolate and far from London.  They were so clever, and knew all the interesting things in the world, but their cleverness and experience never bewildered or overwhelmed me.