tinued Mrs. Stelling, placidly counting her stitches between every pause. "Dulcie? Oh, yes! of course you wouldn't know her. She is Dulcie Challis, my niece, and the Doctor's ward, and she sails in the Kangaroo on the 18th, to join her uncle and aunt in Jamaica."
I was afraid to be too inquisitive, and decided to wait as patiently as I could for the further development of my little romance, but I sounded my hostess cautiously as to the previous night—whether the visitors had enjoyed rest in their extempore shake-downs, etc., and could glean nothing that implied anything like the adventure in which I had so strangely shared. I therefore concluded that my fair friend had kept her counsel, as I religiously kept mine.
"Stelling introduced us."
When I entered the breakfast-room the next morning, my doubts and conjectures were dispelled. My heroine and Dulcie turned out to be, as I strongly suspected, one and the same. She was already seated at the table, and when Stelling introduced us, a crimson flush spread itself slowly over her face. She bowed and smiled, of course, but I noticed that she studiously avoided meeting my eye, and, pitying her embarrassment, I deliberately turned my back upon her, though I could not refrain from studying her, for the second time in my life, through the looking-glass.
She became pale now, and obviously ill at ease and constrained. The Doctor glanced curiously from one to the other, and rallied his ward on her absent-mindedness; and when, with manifest effort, she became bright and talkative, I watched my opportunity for insinuating myself into the conversation, which I daresay I did clumsily enough.
It was wonderful, however, to notice how soon all restraint died away. In half an hour we were capital friends, and the rest, I think, I need not tell you. The 18th came and went, and Dulcie did not sail in the Kangaroo.
Stelling always declares that he saw on this occasion, for the only time in his life, a genuine case of love at first sight. "You couldn't take your eyes off her from the first, old fellow! Don't tell me! I saw you plainly enough peeping at her in the mirror. As for her," he continues, confidentially, "as for her; I've known that girl all her life, and I tell you, sir, there was a look on her face when you entered the room that I have never seen there before."
Stelling is an observant, clever fellow, and I have no doubt whatever he is perfectly right.
