"Dark and handsome. And dressed over so. Might be a princess, who had just slipped off her throne. And clever. She had books and books, some in languages that look like Chinese puzzles." "Some great society dame, no doubt." "I shouldn't be surprised, Mr. Geoffrey. But not English, I should fancy, though she speaks the language as well as you or I. And simple, too. Just tea and toast for breakfast with a little meat and rice for luncheon and dinner with stewed fruit. And she never drinks anything but water. What she spends a week in food wouldn't keep one of our laborers. And she had pounds' worth of hot-house flowers sent from York every day." Mrs. Jessop paused. There was a rustling of something rich, and a lady entered the kitchen. Geoffrey rose instantly from the table upon which he had been seated. He saw a tall woman who might have been anything between thirty and fifty years of age, a woman of great beauty. It was the hard, commanding style of beauty that men call regal. She might have been a queen, but for the faint suggestion of the adventuress about her. To Geoffrey's bow she made the slightest possible haughty recognition. "I'm going out, Mrs. Jessop," she said. "I shall be back to luncheon. If a telegram should happen to come for me, I shall be along the cliffs between here and Beauhaven." She flashed out of the kitchen all rustling and gleaming, and leaving the faint suggestion of some intoxicating perfume behind her. And yet, notwithstanding her proud indifference, it seemed to Geoffrey that she had regarded him with more than passing interest just for the moment. "She is very beautiful," he said. "She is a total stranger to me, and yet she reminds me of somebody else, somebody whose name I can't recall, but who is totally different. It is a strange sort of feeling that I cannot explain." "She's interested for all her haughtiness," said Mrs. Jessop. "I'm sure if she has asked me one question about your family, she has asked a thousand." Geoffrey strolled away round the house. There was a short cut to the place where Ralph was seated, and this short cut lay along the lawn. Geoffrey's feet made no noise. As he passed the window of the sitting-room he looked in. The place was full of flowers, white flowers everywhere. There were azaleas and geraniums and carnations, with delicate foliage of tender green, thousands of blooms, arranged wherever a specimen glass or a bowl could go. Standing with his back to the window, a man was arranging them. And the man was a Hindoo, or other Eastern, one of the men Geoffrey had seen going through that queer incantation on the cliffs. Strange, more than strange, that Mrs. Jessop had said nothing of him. Geoffrey prudently slipped away before he had been seen. He found his uncle doggedly smoking under the hedge. He looked like patience personified. "Well," he said, "have you anything wonderful to relate?" "Pretty well," Geoffrey replied. "To begin with, I have actually seen the lady."