"What in the world are you doing here?" she asked. "Taking a week's holiday, Lady Donnisthorpe. I have been in Spain for the last two years, and shall be for the next nine months." "In Spain?" "I am making a new line between Cadiz and Algeciras." "God bless the man, and I never thought of it!" exclaimed Lady Donnisthorpe. "I think you will do," she added, looking him over, and nodding her head. "I hope so," replied Charnock, cheerfully. "It's a big lift for me." "In a way, no doubt," agreed her ladyship. "Though, mind you, the land isn't what it was." "The railway will improve it," said Charnock. They happened to be talking of different subjects. Lady Donnisthorpe pursued her own. "Then you won't be in England for a year?" she said regretfully. "The company building the line is an English one," replied Charnock. "I shall have to see the directors in June. I shall be in London then." "Then you must come and see me. Write before you leave Spain. Promise!" said Lady Donnisthorpe, who was now elated. Charnock promised, and that day Lady Donnisthorpe wrote to her cousin, Miranda Warriner, at Ronda, who was now at the end of the first year of her widowhood, and of the third year of her ridiculous seclusion at that little hill-town of Spain. Miranda was entreated, implored, and commanded to come to London in May. There was the season, there was Miranda's estate in Suffolk, which needed her attention. Miranda reluctantly consented, and so Lady Donnisthorpe was the instrument by which Charnock and Mrs. Warriner became acquainted. But the foundations of that acquaintanceship were laid without her ladyship's agency, and indeed without the knowledge of either Charnock or Miranda. A trifling defect in the machinery of a P. and O. boat began it. The P. and O. stayed for four days at Aden to make repairs, and so Charnock had four days to wait at Gibraltar before he could embark for England. He did not, however, spend more than two of those four days at Gibraltar, but picking up a yellow handbill in the lounge of the hotel, he obeyed its advice, and crossing the sunlit straits early the next morning saw the jealous hills about Tangier unfold and that cardboard city glitter down to the sea. He was rowed ashore to the usual accompaniment of shouts and yells by a villainous boat's crew of Arabs. A mob of Barbary Jews screamed at him on the landing-stage, and then a Moorish boy with a brown roguish face who was dressed in a saffron jellabia, pushed his way forwards and in a conversational voice said, "You English? God damn you, give me a penny!"