As I have said, and as my diary tells me, she came to tea on the 3d of March.  She was looking particularly attractive that afternoon.  Shaded lamps and the firelight of a cosy room, with all their soft shadows, give a touch of mysterious charm to a pretty girl.  Her jacket had a high sort of Medici collar edged with fur, which set off her shapely throat.  The hair below her hat was soft and brown.  Her brows were wide, her eyes brown and steady, nose and lips sensitive.  She had a way of throwing back her head and pointing her chin fearlessly, as though in perpetual declaration that she cared not a hang either for black-beetles or Germans.  And she was straight as a dart, with the figure of a young Diana—­ Diana before she began to worry her head about beauty competitions.  A kind of dark hat stuck at a considerable angle on her head gave her the prettiest little swaggering air in the world. ...  Well, there was I, a small, brown, withered, grizzled, elderly, mustachioed monkey, chained to my wheel-chair; there were the brave logs blazing up the wide chimney; there was the tea table on my right with its array of silver and old china; and there, on the other side of it, attending to my wants, sat as brave and sweet a type of young English womanhood as you could find throughout the length and breadth of the land.  Had I not been happy, I should have been an ungrateful dog.

We talked of the war, of local news, of the wounded at the hospital.

And here I must say that we are very proud of our Wellingsford Hospital.  It is the largest and the wealthiest in the county.  We owe it to the uneasy conscience of a Wellingsford man, a railway speculator in the forties, who, having robbed widows and orphans and, after trial at the Old Bailey, having escaped penal servitude by the skin of his teeth, died in the odour of sanctity, and the possessor of a colossal fortune in the year eighteen sixty-three.  This worthy gentleman built the hospital and endowed it so generously that a wing of it has been turned into a military hospital with forty beds.  I have the honour to serve on the Committee.  Betty Fairfax entered as a Probationer early in September, and has worked there night and day ever since.  That is why we chatted about the wounded.  Having a day off, she had indulged in the luxury of pretty clothes.  Of these I had duly expressed my admiration.

Tea over, she lit a cigarette for me and one for herself and drew her chair a trifle nearer the fire.  After a little knitting of the brow, she said:—­

“You haven’t asked me why I invited myself to tea.”

“I thought,” said I, “it was for my beaux yeux.”

“Not this time.  I rather wanted you to be the first to receive a certain piece of information.”

I glanced at her sharply.  “You don’t mean to say you’re going to be married at last?”

In some astonishment she retorted:—­

“How did you guess?”

“Holy simplicity!” said I.  “You told me so yourself.”