Mrs. Trelane bowed graciously; if she had not been excited and preoccupied at meeting Gaspard le Marchant’s daughter, on whom her stay in safety and security at Marchant’s Hold depended, she might have seen that Cylmer bent on her an uncomfortably searching stare. But Cristiane had turned toward him. “Good-by,” she said hastily; “so sorry you can’t come in.” And before he could answer she had swept Mrs. Trelane into the house. Mr. Cylmer was dismissed in disgrace. Yet, as he turned away, he scarcely thought of it. “Now, what,” he said to himself, “does that woman remind me of? I never saw her before.” Yet the carriage of her head, her long throat, was somehow familiar; and as he thought there came to him the sudden vision of a little rose-colored room, full of a haunting scent of bitter almonds. “What nonsense!” he thought irritably. “Why should Sir Gaspard’s cousin remind me of poor Abbotsford?” And then he stopped short, annoyingly conscious that he must be making a fool of himself. For he remembered now that Mrs. Trelane had held a handkerchief in her hands. He had smelled that smell of bitter almonds in reality; the woman and her handkerchief reeked of peach-blossom. And yet he was puzzled--and might have been more so had he known whose strange green eyes had peered at him through the crack of a sheltering door. The woman in his thoughts was standing just then in her bedroom at Marchant’s Hold, with her hostess beside her. “You must be tired,” Cristiane said; “do come to dinner in a tea-gown. We shall be alone, for there was no one I could have asked to meet you except Miles Cylmer, whom you saw just now.” “Miles Cylmer!” Mrs. Trelane turned her back sharply, in her sudden sick surprise. “Mr. Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry. He lives near, and he comes very often when father is at home.” A new self-consciousness born of the afternoon kept the girl from looking at her guest. “Come down,” she said abruptly, “when you’re ready.” The door had hardly closed behind her before Ismay, in the next room, heard herself called. “What is it?” she asked, standing in the doorway. “Are you ill?” For Mrs. Trelane was sitting down as if her strength were gone, gazing straight before her as one who sees a ghost. “Ismay,” she said, “that man who was here this afternoon, do you know who he is?” The girl hesitated; had her mother known more than she knew about her visit to the Palace Theater? “Do I know his name?” she parried. “No--why?” Mrs. Trelane rose, staggered, and sat down again. “I can’t look,” she said. “Open the door into the passage and see if that girl has gone. Quick!” “It’s all right,” Ismay said, after a contemptuous survey. “Why? I don’t see why you’re looking as if you were going to be seasick.” “Look here,” Mrs. Trelane said roughly, “do you remember the Abbotsford business? This man who was here to-day is Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry.” It was Ismay’s turn to stare with haggard eyes.