"Hope you'll like it," returned Miss Lermontof shortly. "At any rate, it
has the advantage of being only quarter of an hour's walk from
Grellingham Place. I've just come from there." And with that she
relapsed into silence.

Although Olga Lermontof had frequently accompanied Diana during her
lessons with Baroni, the acquaintance between the two had made but small
progress. There had been but little opportunity for conversation on
those occasions, and Diana, instinctively resenting the accompanist's
cool and rather off-hand manner, had never sought to become better
acquainted with her. It was generally supposed that she was a Russian,
and she was undoubtedly a highly gifted musician, but there was something
oddly disagreeable and repellent about her personality. Whenever Diana
had thought about her at all, she had mentally likened her to Ishmael,
whose hand was against every man and every man's hand against his. And
now she found herself involved with this strange woman in the rather
close intimacy of daily life consequent upon becoming fellow-boarders in
the same house.

Seen amidst so many strange faces, the familiarity of Olga Lermontof's
clever but rather forbidding visage bred a certain new sense of
comradeship, and Diana made several tentative efforts to draw her into
conversation. The results were meagre, however, the Russian confining
herself to monosyllabic answers until some one--one of the musical
students--chanced to mention that she had recently been to the Premier
Theatre to see Adrienne de Gervais in a new play, "The Grey Gown," which
had just been produced there.

It was then that Miss Lermontof apparently awoke to the fact that the