CHAPTER III

BERENE HAD BEEN SEVERAL MONTHS in her new home when Preston Cheney came to lodge at the Palace.

He met her on the stairway the first morning after his arrival, as he was descending to the street door.

Bringing up a tray covered with a snowy napkin, she stepped to one side and paused, to make room for him to pass.

Preston was not one of those young men who find pastime in flirtations with nursery maids or kitchen girls.  The very thought of it offended his good taste.  Once, in listening to the boastful tales of a modern Don Juan, who was relating his gallant adventures with a handsome waiter girl at a hotel, Preston had remarked, “I would as soon think of using my dinner napkin for a necktie, as finding romance with a servant girl.”

Yet he appreciated a snowy, well-laundried napkin in its place, and he was most considerate and thoughtful in his treatment of servants.

He supposed Berene to be an upper servant of the house, and yet, as he glanced at her, a strange and unaccountable feeling of interest seized upon him.  The creamy pallor of her skin, colourless save for the full red lips, the dark eyes full of unutterable longing, the aristocratic poise of the head, the softly rounded figure, elegant in its s