"Heavens!" ejaculated Mrs. Cartwright absently, as she took up her knitting again, "that must have been Madame Leroux's nephew. Her sister's son, the _artilleriste_. I heard all about him the other day. Gustave Tronchet his name is. Madame told me that he was coming here _en perme_ as her guest, seeing she had no son, and that he loved to eat well and to be _bien_ generally. I suppose she is introducing him----!" "Some romance!" laughed Captain Ross, jerking his head towards the door through which the fur-clad form of the lonely traveller had disappeared. This was the first remark of his to which Olwen had paid scant attention. As suddenly as if some one had called her, she sprang up. She had dropped a kiss on her Uncle's thistle-down locks, had given her hand to Mrs. Cartwright, had launched a shy glance and a "good night" in the direction of the others, and had darted away, a slim sprite in grey with touches of black, almost before the two young men could rise to their feet. Mrs. Cartwright was still thinking of the stiletto-eyed French manageress who had introduced her nephew to the occupant of the best room in the hotel. "What family spirit!" she admired. "What sense of possibilities! What respect for Power--I mean money. What an admirable nation they are.... Will ours ever learn foresight and thrift from theirs?" "Ours--that is, mine--has family loyalty very strongly too," the Professor joined in. "The Welsh, my dear lady, are as clannish in that way as the French; they'll do anything for 'my nephew.'" "They've an eye skinned for the dollars as well," volunteered Captain Ross, his robin-like eye twinkling as he took out a cigar. "What's that saying--ah, yes, God made a Welshman, and God made a Jew, but thank God he never made a Welsh Jew!" The Professor stiffened a little; and Mrs. Cartwright, seeing this, drew the conversation back to the worldly aspects of germinating Romance.... The drift of all these remarks would have been entirely lost upon Olwen even had she stayed to hear them. For she knew better. She knew that it was not Madame Leroux, the manageress, who was responsible for the coming together of a travelling spinster and of a French soldier on leave. She, Olwen, knew what was responsible for those attentions, that talk, that interested, deferential smile on the part of the man who had attached himself to her new-made friend. Olwen knew what had attracted him where no man had ever been attracted before. Yes! She knew! This was the work of the Charm that she herself had seen hidden away so near to an unsought heart....