“I was wondering how long they could stand three men smoking in one of the boxes they call cars,” said Mrs. Downs.  She was seated between Miss Morris and Carlton, directly opposite the Hohenwalds, and so near them that she had to speak in a whisper.  To avoid doing this Miss Morris asked Carlton for a pencil, and scribbled with it in the novel she held on her lap.  Then she passed them both back to him, and said, aloud:  “Have you read this?  It has such a pretty dedication.”  The dedication read, “Which is Aline?” And Carlton, taking the pencil in his turn, made a rapid sketch of her on the fly-leaf, and wrote beneath it:  “This is she.  Do you wonder I travelled four thousand miles to see her?”

Miss Morris took the book again, and glanced at the sketch, and then at the three Princesses, and nodded her head.  “It is very beautiful,” she said, gravely, looking out at the passing landscape.

“Well, not beautiful exactly,” answered Carlton, surveying the hills critically, “but certainly very attractive.  It is worth travelling a long way to see, and I should think one would grow very fond of it.”

Miss Morris tore the fly-leaf out of the book, and slipped it between the pages.  “May I keep it?” she said.  Carlton nodded. nodded.  “And will you sign it?” she asked, smiling.  Carlton shrugged his shoulders, and laughed.  “If you wish it,” he answered.

The Princess wore a gray cheviot travelling dress, as did her sisters, and a gray Alpine hat.  She was leaning back, talking to the English captain who accompanied them, and laughing.  Carlton thought he had never seen a woman who appealed so strongly to every taste of which he was possessed.  She seemed so sure of herself, so alert, and yet so gracious, so easily entertained, and yet, when she turned her eyes towards the strange, dismal landscape, so seriously intent upon its sad beauty.  The English captain dropped his head, and with the pretence of pulling at his mustache, covered his mouth as he spoke to her.  When he had finished he gazed consciously at the roof of the car, and she kept her eyes fixed steadily at the object towards which they had turned when he had ceased speaking, and then, after a decent pause, turned her eyes, as Carlton knew she would, towards him.

“He was telling her who I am,” he thought, “and about the picture in the catalogue.”

In a few moments she turned to her sister and spoke to her, pointing out at something in the scenery, and the same pantomime was repeated, and again with the third sister.

“Did you see those girls talking about you, Mr. Carlton?” Miss Morris asked, after they had left the car.

Carlton said it looked as though they were.

“Of course they were,” said Miss Morris.

“That Englishman told the Princess Aline something about you, and then she told her sister, and she told the eldest one.  It would be nice if they inherit their father’s interest in painting, wouldn’t it?”