he answered regretfully.

"No, no," she persisted, but beginning to experience some slight
embarrassment. (It is embarrassing to find you have betrayed a keen and
vivid recollection of a man who has apparently forgotten that he ever set
eyes on you!) "Oh, you must remember--it was in Grellingham Place, and
the greengrocer's boy helped as well."

She broke off, reading the polite negation in his face.

"You must be confusing me with some one else. I should not be likely
to--forget--so charming a _rencontre_."

There was surely a veiled mockery in his composed tones, irreproachably
courteous though they were, and Diana coloured hotly. Somehow, this man
possessed the faculty of making her feel awkward and self-conscious and
horribly young; he himself was so essentially of the polished type of
cosmopolitan that beside him she felt herself to be as raw and crude as
any bread-and-butter miss fresh from the schoolroom. Moreover, she had
an inward conviction that in reality he recollected the incident in
Grellingham Place as clearly as she did herself, although he refused to
admit it.

She relapsed into an uncomfortable silence, and presently the attendant
from the restaurant car came along the corridor and looked in to ask if
they were going to have dinner on the train. Both nodded an affirmative.

"Table for two?" he queried, evidently taking them to be two friends
travelling together.

Diana was about to enlighten him when her _vis-a-vis_ leaned forward
hastily.

"Please," he said persuasively, and as she returned no answer he
apparently took her silence for consent, for something passed
unobtrusively from his hand to that of the attendant, and the latter
touched his hat with a smiling--"Right you are, sir! I'll reserve a
table for two."

Diana felt that the acquaintance was progressing rather faster than she
could have wished, but she hardly knew how to check it. Finally she
mustered up courage to say firmly:--

"It must only be if I pay for my own dinner."

"But, of course," he answered courteously, with the slightest tinge of
surprise in his tones, and once again Diana, felt that she had made a
fool of herself and blushed to the tips of her ears.

A faint smile trembled for an instant on his lips, and then, without
apparently noticing her confusion, he began to talk, passing easily from
one subject to another until she had regained her confidence, finally
leading her almost imperceptibly into telli