I was unable to pursue this line of thought because Miss Blair came strolling by with the same nonchalant air with which she had passed me before lunch. I can hardly say she stopped; rather she commanded, and swept me along. "Don’t you want to take a walk, Mr. Soames? You’d better do it now, because we’ll be rolling scuppers under by and by." For making her acquaintance it was too good an opportunity to miss. In spite of my inability to play up to her gay cheerfulness I found myself strolling along beside her. I may say at once that I never met a human being with whom I was more instantly on terms of confidence. The sketch of her life which she gave me without a second’s hesitation came in response to my remark that from her questions to me at table I judged her to have traveled. "I was born on the road, and I suppose I shall never get off it. My father and mother had got hitched to a theatrical troupe on tour." A distaste acquired as a little girl on tour had kept her from trying her fortunes on the boards. She had an idea that her father was acting still, though after his divorce from her mother they had lost sight of him. Her mother had died six years previously, since which time she had looked after herself, with some ups and downs of experience. She had been a dressmaker, a milliner, and a model, with no more liking for any of these professions than she had for the theatrical. In winding up this brief narrative she astounded me with the statement: "And now I’m going to be an adventuress." "A what?" I stopped in the middle of the deck to stare at her. She repeated the obnoxious noun, continuing to walk on. "But I thought you were a stenographer." "That’s part of it. I’m deceiving poor Miss Averill. She’s my dupe. I make use of people in that way—and throw them aside." "But doing the work for Doctor Averill in the mean time." "Oh, that’s just a pretext." "A pretext for what?" "For being an adventuress. Goodness knows what evil I shall do in that family before I get out of it." "What do you mean by that?" "Oh, well, you’ll see. If you’re born baleful—well, you’ve just got to be baleful; that’s all. Did you ever hear of an adventuress who didn’t wreck homes?" I said I had not much experience with adventuresses, and didn’t quite know the point of their occupation. "Well, you stay around where I am and you’ll see." "Have you wrecked many homes up to the present?" I ventured to inquire. "This is the first one I ever had a chance at. I only decided to be an adventuress about the time when Miss Averill came along."