"Oh! because there was nowhere for me to go. I went to London because I'd only been there once in my life. Then I went over to Paris because I'd never been there. Then I stuck a hat-pin into the guide-book to see where I'd go next. It came out here. It seemed like Fate, didn't it? So I came." Olwen looked at her as she poured out the tea. Her wrists clanked with gold curb bracelets (of a pattern as obsolete as was the enormous brooch of plaited gold and turquoises at her throat; the heavily set rings on her fingers, no doubt jewellery of the late Miss Walsh). They were chains that had fettered a patient slave--but she was a slave no longer. "I'm so glad!" said little Olwen, impulsively. "Oh! Thank you." Her hostess smiled as gratefully as if the girl herself had helped to alter that will. "I knew you were sympathetic. I could _say_ things to you. One can _talk_ to some people, can't one?" she added, as the waiter went out. "I thought at lunch what a sweet little face you had, if you don't mind my saying so. There--there's a charm about it! What is your name?... Olwen Howel-Jones.... Is your tea right? I didn't even know they had proper tea in France now; my cousin never would go Abroad because she said they gave you no tea.... Olwen! How pretty. How old are you? You don't mind my asking, do you? Nineteen? I was just nineteen when I went to live at the Grange--Miss Walsh's house. Nineteen.... I always liked young people; but of course we never saw any. My cousin disliked girls as a rule. Even the servants were quite elderly. I--sometimes" she went on in a rush as of the pent-up confidences of years, "I longed to see something young, do you know? I suppose _you've_ always.... Brothers and sisters? Lots of cousins? How nice! And lots of friends, of course...." She stopped, she fixed her eyes musingly upon the dainty creature helping herself to cherry _compote_ and ended with a shy, quick involuntary question. "Are you engaged to be married?" "Me?" exclaimed Olwen with a swift turn of her little black head against the hotel easy chair. She laughed, with the traditional girlish rejoinder, "Oh, dear, no! I don't suppose I----" It broke off short on her lips. Footsteps, two sets of footsteps, were tramping up the polished shallow stairs outside the closed door. A man's voice rang out as it had rung out that morning under her Uncle's balcony. That accent which was as penetrating as Scots mist, as clear as Canadian frost, reached her ears in the giving out of this dictum: "What I demand in Women is, firstly----" Here a door above slammed, cutting off the rest. Ah, thought Olwen, "They" were back again already, were "They"? This breathless thought made her lose the thread for a moment of what this Miss Walsh, the wealthy waif, was pouring out to the first friendly soul she had encountered in the place.