Collingwood sat down; Nesta Mallathorpe sat down, too, and as they
looked at each other she smiled again.

"I have seen you before, Mr. Collingwood," she said. "I knew it must be
you when they brought up your card."

Collingwood used his glance of polite inquiry to make a closer
inspection of his hostess. He decided that Nesta Mallathorpe was not so
much pretty as eminently attractive--a tall, well-developed,
warm-coloured young woman, whose clear grey eyes and red lips and
general bearing indicated the possession of good health and spirits. And
he was quite certain that if he had ever seen her before he would not
have forgotten it.

"Where have you seen me?" he asked, smiling back at her.

"Have you forgotten the mock-trial--year before last?" she asked.

Collingwood remembered what she was alluding to. He had taken part, in
company with various other law students, in a mock-trial, a breach of
promise case, for the benefit of a certain London hospital, to him had
fallen one of the principal parts, that of counsel for the plaintiff.
"When I saw your name, I remembered it at once," she went on. "I was
there--I was a probationer at St. Chad's Hospital at that time."

"Dear me!" said Collingwood, "I should have thought our histrionic
efforts would have been forgotten. I'm afraid I don't remember much
about them, except that we had a lot of fun out of the affair. So you
were at St. Chad's?" he continued, with a reminiscence of the
surroundings of the institution they were talking of. "Very different to