the previous afternoon, and whose eyes had had such a strange effect upon me ever since. "Permit me to ask if this is your property, madam?" I began, holding out the bracelet as I spoke. "I had the good fortune to discover it on the stairs just after you passed." "Ah, yes, it is mine," she answered in excellent French, and in a voice that was low and musical. "I would not have lost it for anything. It was careless of me to have dropped it. I thank you most heartily." She bowed, and at a signal from the Commissionaire, the coachman started his horses, and a moment later the carriage had left the courtyard. For some moments after it had passed out of sight I stood looking in the direction it had taken. Then turning to the Commissionaire who stood before me, I enquired if it were in his power to tell me the name of the lady to whom I had rendered so small a service. "She is Madame la Comtesse de Venetza," the man replied. "The Countess de Venetza?" said I to myself, "that tells me nothing. It sounds Italian. At the same time it might be almost anything else." Circumstances forbade me that I should question the man further, though the temptation was sufficiently great. Nothing remained, therefore, but to withdraw and to derive what consolation I could from the fact that I had spoken to her and knew her name. "The Countess de Venetza," I repeated, as I made my way up the steps once more. The name had suddenly come to have a strange fascination for me. I found myself repeating it again and again, each time deriving a new sensation from it. Having procured a morning paper, I returned to the verandah, seated myself in the place I had occupied on the previous afternoon, when I had first seen the Countess, and turned my attention to the English news. If the information set forth there were to be believed, there could be no sort of doubt that we were distinctly nearer the trouble which had been brewing for so long. The wildest rumours were afloat, and the versions printed in the Parisian papers were not of a nature calculated to allay my fears. If what they said were correct there could be no doubt that England was standing face to face with one of the greatest dangers that had threatened her in her life as a nation. And yet it was impossible to believe that the Might, Majesty, Dominion, and power of Great Britain could be successfully defied by a rabble horde such as we knew the Boers to be. But had we not the remembrance of '81 continually with us to remind us that on another lamentable occasion we had been too sanguine? This time, I told myself, it was vitally necessary that it should be all going forward and no drawing back. If we set our hands to the plough, it must be with a rigorous determination not to remove them until the task we had set ourselves should be accomplished.