"Good heavens!--you don't mean a daughter of old Bob Blanchflower!" "Her father's name was Sir Robert Blanchflower." The tanned face beside her expressed the liveliest interest. "Why, I knew Blanchflower quite well. I met him long ago when I was staying with an uncle in India--at a station in the Bombay presidency. He was Major Blanchflower then"-- The speaker's brow furrowed a little as though under the stress of some sudden recollection, and he seemed to check himself in what he was saying. But in a moment he resumed:-- "A little after that he left the army, and went into Parliament. And--precisely!--after a few years they made him governor somewhere--not much of a post. Then last year his old father, a neighbour of mine in Hampshire, quite close to my little place, went and died, and Blanchflower came into a fortune and a good deal of land besides. And I remember hearing that he had thrown up the Colonial Service, had broken down in health, and was living abroad for some years to avoid the English climate. That's the man of course. And the Valkyrie is Blanchflower's daughter! Very odd that! I must have seen her as a child. Her mother"--he paused again slightly--"was a Greek by birth, and gloriously handsome. Blanchflower met her when he was military attache at Athens for a short time.--Well, that's all very interesting!" And in a ruminating mood the Englishman took out his cigarette-case. "You smoke, Madame?" The Swedish lady quietly accepted the courtesy. And while the too insistent band paused between one murdered Wagnerian fragment and another, they continued a conversation which seemed to amuse them both. * * * * *