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a grace that definitely was foreign.
    And he was minus one arm!
    Josie felt a distinct sensation of shock when she noticed the empty sleeve of his impeccable light grey suit.
    “Nurse Winter is wearing what we in England call ‘mufti’,” Mrs. Duveen explained, looking up with her carefully cultivated smile at the distinguished luncheon guest.
    “I see.” The marquis turned his grave eyes once more upon Josie. “Your pardon, senorita, for the impertinence of my observation, which escaped me I’m afraid before I properly realized what I was saying.”
    Josie assured him that is was perfectly all right, and then aperitifs were brought to them in the wide verandah that overlooked the sea. Josie asked for an iced grapefruit juice, and she carefully refrained from appearing to expect to take any part in the conversation that followed, although Michael would have drawn her in more than once. He was looking deceptively fit after his few days in San Fernando, and his spirits were unmistakably high, which pleased his mother so much that she herself was in the highest spirits. She constantly addressed the marquis as “My dear Marquis”, and made anxious inquiries after his sister, and was plainly reassured on being informed that Maria Cortes was looking forward to their arrival at the villa, which was several miles along the coast. She would have liked to have accepted the invitation for lunch today, but had a friend of her own whom she had had to entertain.
    Josie had the strong feeling that Mrs. Duveen hoped quite ardently that the friend being entertained was not masculine.
    “I have been telling Nurse Winter that your sister is an extremely successful writer,” Mrs. Duveen said, when they went in at last to lunch. Their table was in a window, decorated with some wonderful wine-colored carnations that gave off a gloriously spicy smell, and the cream of the waiting staff seemed to have been deputed to attend to their wants.
    Josie wondered whether it was because of the marquis, who was no doubt very well known, since it was a little in excess of the attention they normally received at their table.
    She thought that he looked a little amused at the description of his sister as an extremely successful writer.
    “Maria has been amusing herself by attempting to break into literature ever since she left school,” he said. “But I would hardly call her success so far extreme. However, it does keep her entertained, and since my mother’s death she has been a little inclined to mope. She has just returned from a visit to the United States where she became engaged to be married.”
    “Engaged to be married!” Mrs. Duveen sounded absolutely shocked.
    The marquis smiled.
    “But it came to nothing—or, perhaps I should say, it terminated in nothing! But Maria is a little like that. Her short married life was not particularly happy, and nowadays she seems to be experimenting a little. Perhaps one day she will find someone who will ensure for her a more permanent kind of happiness than my late lamented brother-in-law was able to ensure for her.”
    His eyes were on Josie as he spoke, dwelling upon her as if, in spite of her silence, she interested him, and in any case he found her a pleasing study. It was the first time Josie had been given any indication that Maria Cortes was a widow, and she looked surprised as she glanced up.
    Carlos Alonso Christoval, twenty-first Marquis de Palheiro, misunderstood the look of surprise, and smiled a little more inexplicably as he explained: “In Spain, Nurse Winter, marriages are so often arranged by parties with whom the success or failure of the marriage does not really rest, and perhaps that is one reason why they do not always work out. My sister’s experience was not one of the more fortunate ones, but mercifully she did not have to put up with it for very long. My brother-in-law ended his life in a motor car rally.”
    “I—I see,” Josie said, but she wondered why he had