As Jim left his room to go down to his first breakfast at the Widow Stickney’s table he experienced an unmistakable attack of it. Marie Ducharme was the cause. Doubtless they would breakfast together. He was a bit apprehensive as to how it would go off. There was a certain amount of curiosity-incited anticipation of a second meeting with her, a second opportunity to glimpse her queer, disturbed, turbulent personality. Let there be no error here—Jim Ashe was not drawn toward Marie Ducharme. Quite the contrary. She was not at all the sort of person who would attract him; and her present frame of mind was not such as to magnetize any healthy young man. But she was a girl; she was a step beyond the ordinary; she had a personality that one could not encounter and escape unaffected. That was all. He hesitated for a moment in the hall, and then entered the dining-room, where the widow and Marie Ducharme were already at the table. “Right here, Mr. Ashe,” said the widow; “take this here chair with the arms and the cushion into it. It’ll seem sort of queer to see a man settin’ into it agin. My first used it and my second used it.” “And you keep it in case it might be needed again,” said Jim, gravely. The widow shook her head. “’Tain’t nothin’ but a memento no more. Husbands is all right, but enough’s enough. What a body can want of more ’n two is more ’n I can see. Let me make you acquainted with Miss Ducharme, Mr. Ashe.” Miss Ducharme nodded coldly. “Cream ’n’ sugar?” asked the widow. “Some cream, a good deal of sugar, and a little coffee,” said Jim, stealing a look at the young woman. She was stirring her coffee, a process which appeared to require concentration. Jim didn’t blame her for stirring it or for doing anything else which would bring to public attention a hand as graceful and shapely as hers. Her face, beneath a stack of blackest hair, was expressionless. “Mr. Ashe hain’t goin’ to bite you, Marie,” said the widow, with a note of exasperation in her voice. Jim was glad he had not taken a swallow of coffee, for he could not have been responsible for consequences. Miss Ducharme raised her eyes slowly, looked for an instant into Jim’s eyes. “Nobody’s going to bite me if I can help it,” she said. “Mrs. Stickney is right,” said Jim, “I’m not vicious. I almost never bite strangers. Still, I might wear a muzzle if it would help matters.” Miss Ducharme made no reply save a faint movement of her shoulders—inherited from an ancestor who had served Frontenac. She finished her coffee and toast and egg slowly, arose silently, and left the room. The widow looked after her a moment with compressed lips. “Sometimes,” she said, “she’s that cantankerous my hand fairly itches to come against her ear. Seems she might ’a’ acted a leetle prettier, bein’s you’re a stranger and this is your first meal.” “Don’t let it worry you, Mrs. Stickney.”