By this time Armathwaite had seen that his captive was a remarkably pretty girl. Male attire supplies the severest test of feminine beauty, since form and feature are deprived of adventitious aids; but a small, oval face, two pouting lips, a finely-modeled nose, brilliant brown eyes, swept by long curved lashes, and a smooth forehead, rising above arched and well-marked eyebrows, needed no art of milliner or dressmaker to enhance their charms. She was fairly tall, too--though dwarfed by Armathwaite's six feet and an inch of height in his slippered feet--and admirably proportioned, if slender and lithe. Evidently, she thought he had not penetrated her disguise, and was momentarily becoming more self-possessed. Again, she had some explanation of her presence in the house which could not fail of acceptance, and did not scruple, therefore, to display a close acquaintance with its arrangements denied to one who admittedly had taken up his abode there only that day. The man listened to her quick, confident steps going to the kitchen, heard the rattle of a drawer in an antique dresser which stood there, and, with an emphatic gesture, seemed to appeal to the gods ere he bent over the stove to see if the water was yet a-boil. The girl might be hungry, but feminine curiosity proved stronger than the urgent claims of an empty stomach. She went into the larder, and undoubtedly eyed the new tenant's stores. She implied as much when she re-entered the dining-room. "Boiled eggs require pepper and salt," she explained. "You've got so many little paper bags that I didn't dare rummage among them, so I've secured a cruet which was left here when my--when the people who used to live here went away. The salt may be a bit damp, but the pepper should be all right." Without more ado she tackled a slice of bread, breaking it into small pieces, and buttering each piece separately before munching it. "Some wise person said in a newspaper the other day that one ought to give every mouthful of bread three hundred bites," she went on. "I wonder if he ever fasted eighteen hours before practicing his own precept. I'm afraid I wouldn't believe him if he said he did." "People who study their digestion generally die young," said Armathwaite drily. "Oh, I don't agree with you in that," she retorted. "My dad is great on food theories. He knows all about proteins and carbohydrates; he can tell you to a fourth decimal the caloric value of an egg; and _he's_ a phenomenally healthy person. By the way, how are those eggs coming on?" "Try this one. I think the water has been boiling three minutes!"