Page:The Talleyrand maxim, by J.S. Fletcher (IA talleyrandmaximb00flet).pdf/49

 its. 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 Normandale!"

"Yes," she replied. "Very—very different to Normandale. But when I was at St. Chad's, I didn't know that I—that we should ever come to Normandale."

"And now that you are here?" he asked.

The girl looked out through the big window on the valley which lay in front of the old house, and she shook her head a little.

"It's very beautiful,' she answered, "but I sometimes wish I was back at St. Chad's—with something to do. Here—there's nothing to do but to do nothing." Col-