"It is a Russian custom. M. Demetrius and I are Russians. Still, if the suggestion appears presumptuous"--he waved his hand with assumed deprecation--"I withdraw it and apologise." "No!" She passed her tongue over dry, white lips, and answered faintly. "You shall have your--tea." Then, rising hurriedly, she made for the near window on an obvious excuse. "I do not see him coming." As plainly as though Aksakoff had put it into words did Lady Jim know that he intended to drug their victim. What would occur if this plotter succeeded she did not know; what might occur she shivered to think of, and the thought made her rash. "The police!" she murmured, turning from the window. M. Aksakoff joined her, adjusting his pince-nez leisurely, and proceeded to look up and down the street, two stories below. "I do not see the police, madame. But what a delightful day! I trust the night will be equally mild, since I journey to Havre." "You go to Havre--to-night?" breathed Leah, not yet herself. "By a moderately late train. My cousin, Count Petrovitch, is there with his yacht. We have to talk about his possible marriage with my daughter, before he leaves to-morrow for Kronstadt." "Oh!" sighed Lady Jim, very white. "How--how--amusing!" and after misusing the word, she went back to her chair with geographical thoughts. Paris--Havre--Kronstadt--Siberia; and Demetrius. "Oh!" sighed she again, with a trembling hand shielding her eyes. "You are ailing, madame," cried Aksakoff, hastening to her politely. "Starving!" replied Leah, with a wry smile. "Hush!" The warning hissed through the chatter of Joan and Askew, who entered, almost riotously happy. Their exuberant manners and frank speech brought a wholesome breeze of cleansing honesty into the atmosphere of stale rascality. The bracing wind blew Lady Jim out of dark chambers into the day-lit spaces of the commonplace. With the protean capability of women she flashed as a sun from passing storm-clouds, to shine on the honest and hungry. "Thanks awfully for your invitation to luncheon," said Askew. "Which you forgot." "Did I ever receive it?" he asked doubtfully. "Did not my last remark imply the invitation. Remarkable!" So irrelevant sounded the last word that Aksakoff queried its reason. "Not that a man should forget an invitation," she explained; "but that a single meal should escape his greedy memory." "You make me out to be a gourmet," hinted the invited guest. "Why not a gourmand? One speaks French in Paris." "Not invariably, since we now converse in English," said Askew, dryly; and she approved of the retort. Clearly he was rapidly recovering from the green-sickness of crude passion. Meantime Joan instructed Aksakoff in ancient history. "The hieroglyphics on the Place de la Concorde Obelisk describe the triumphs of Rameses II., who reigned over Egypt in the fourteenth century before Christ. Mr. Askew knows him." "Indeed?" smiled Lady Jim. "Is he stopping in Paris?"