She started slightly and halted. What words I uttered I hardly knew, but a few moments later I found myself strolling at her side, chatting merrily in English. Her chiffons exuded the delicate scent of Rose d'Orsay, that sweet perfume which is the hall-mark of the modern well-dressed woman. And she was undoubtedly English, after all! "Oh no," she declared in a low, musical voice, in response to a fear I had expressed, "I am not at all cold. This place is so charming, and so warm, to where my father and I have recently been--at Uleaborg, in Finland." "At Uleaborg!" I echoed. "Why, that is away--out of the world--at the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia!" "Yes," she declared, with a light laugh. "It is so windy and cold, and oh! so wretchedly dull." "I should rather think so!" I cried. "Why, it is almost within the Arctic Circle. Why did you go up there--so far north--in winter?" "Ah!" she sighed, "we are always travelling. My father is the modern Wandering Jew, I think. Our movements are always sudden, and our journeys always long ones--from one end of Europe to the other very often." "You seem tired of it!" I remarked. "Tired!" she gasped, her voice changing. "Ah! if you only knew how I long for peace, for rest--for home!" and she sighed. "Where is your home?" "Anywhere, now-a-days," was her rather despondent reply. "We are wanderers. We lived in England once--but, alas! that is now all of the past. My father is compelled to travel, and I must, of necessity, go with him. I am afraid," she added quickly, "that I bore you with this chronicle of my own troubles. I really ought not to say this--to you, a stranger," she said, with a low, nervous little laugh. "Though I may be a stranger, yet, surely, I may become your friend," I remarked, looking into her beautiful face, half concealed by the blue wrap. For a moment she hesitated; then, halting in the gravelled path and looking at me, she replied very seriously-- "No; please do not speak of that again." "Why not?" "Well--only because you must not become my friend." "You are lonely," I blurted forth. "I have watched you, and I have seen that you are in sore need of a friend. Do you deny that?" "No," she faltered. "I--I--yes, what you say is, alas! correct. How can I deny it? I have no friend; I am alone." "Then allow me to be one. Put to me whatever test you will," I exclaimed, "and I hope I may bear it satisfactorily. I, too, am a lonely man--a wanderer. I, too, am in need of a friend in whom I can confide, whose guidance I can ask. Surely there is no friend better for a lonely man than a good woman?" "Ah, no," she cried, suddenly covering her face with both her hands. "You don't know--you are ignorant. Why do you say this?" "Why? Shall I tell you why?" I asked, gallantly bending to her in deep earnestness. "Because I have watched you--because I know you are very unhappy!"