“There!” I thought.  “Some one has been sent to tell me the servants’ dinner will be over if I don’t hurry.  Perhaps it’s too late already, and I’m so hungry!”

I bounced to the door, and threw it wide open, to find Mr. John Dane standing in the passage, holding a small tray crowded with dishes.

“Here you are,” he said, in the most matter-of-fact way, as if bringing meals to my door had been a fixed habit with him, man and boy, for years.  “Hope I haven’t spilt anything!  There’s such a crush in our feeding place that I thought you’d be safer up here.  So I made friends with a dear old waiter chap, and said I wanted something nice for my sister.”

“You didn’t!” I exclaimed.

“I did.  Do you mind much?  I understood it was agreed that was our relationship.”

“No, I don’t mind much,” I returned.  “Thank you for everything.”  I shook back a cloud of hair, and glanced up at the chauffeur.  Our eyes met, and as I took the tray my fingers touched his.  His dark face grew faintly red, and then a slight frown drew his eyebrows together.

“Why do you suddenly look like that?” I asked.  “Have I done anything to make you cross?”

“Only with myself,” he said.

“But why?  Are you sorry you’ve been kind to me?  Oh, if you only knew, I need it to-night.  Go on being kind.”

“You’re not the sort of girl a man can be kind to,” he said, almost gruffly, it seemed to me.

“Am I ungrateful, then?”

“I don’t know what you are,” he answered.  “I only know that if I looked at you long as you are now I should make an ass of myself—­and make you detest or despise me.  So good night—­and good appetite.”

He turned to go, but I called him back.  “Please!” I begged.  “I’ll only keep you one minute.  I’m sure you’re joking, big brother, about being an ass, or poking fun at me.  But I don’t care.  I need some advice so badly!  I’ve no one but you to give it to me.  I know you won’t desert me, because if you were like that you wouldn’t have come to stop at this hotel to watch over your new sister—­which I’m sure you did, though that may sound ever so conceited.”

“Of course I won’t desert you,” he said.  “I couldn’t—­now, even if I would.  But I’ll go away till you’ve had your dinner, and—­and made yourself look less like a siren and more like an ordinary human being—­if possible.  Then I’ll run up and knock, and you can come out in the passage to be advised.”

“A siren—­with a towel round her neck!” I laughed.  “If I should sing to you, perhaps you might say—­”

“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, or there would be an end of—­your brother,” he broke in, laughing a little.  “It wouldn’t need much more.”  And with that he was off.

He is very abrupt in his manner at times, certainly, this strange chauffeur, and yet one’s feelings aren’t exactly hurt.  And one feels, somehow, as I think the motor seems to feel, as if one could trust to his guidance in the most dangerous places.  I’m sure he would give his life to save the car, and I believe he would take a good deal of trouble to save me; indeed, he has already taken a good deal of trouble, in several ways.