it nearer his eyes he spoke as if reading a date:
"Le vingt-cinq aout."

The pallor of his face, joined to its outline, which was in full
profile, held me where I stood as if spellbound. Somewhere, a long time
ago, I had seen that face.

"Yes, it is an unusual coincidence," he remarked, as if just
comprehending what had been said. "But your aunt Edith must be much
older than you?"

"No: only ten years."

"Is she married?"

"No."

"And you?"

"Nor I, monsieur. We belong to the noble army of old maids, which on the
other side is a more honorable and obstinate sisterhood than here."

He smiled faintly, and wiped his forehead with a large white
handkerchief.

"If I should go to America," he observed, "I should greatly desire to
visit the locality where women like you live and die unmarried."

"Oh, for that matter, you can't miss them," I replied laughingly:
"they're common from Maine to California. Spinsterhood is an outgrowth
of our Declaration of Independence--'liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.'"

"But, really, I desire to know the name of the place where you live: I
am sure it will interest me greatly. Will you not write it for me?" And
he offered me a blank card.

"Oh, certainly, but I don't understand why."

"I may possibly go and see your aunt Edith and tell her I saw you on the
top of a mountain. Perhaps you would like to send her a message?"

"Well, if you see her," I replied in the same tone, moving away, "tell
her I haven't forgotten to beware of foreigners."

"Just one more word," he entreated, following me. "Is your aunt Edith,
Edith Mack?"

"Yes, but how should you know?" and in that moment it flashed upon my
mind like sudden daybreak. "And you are--" I stammered.

"A man who has loved her many a year. To-morrow I leave Vienna for
England, to sail for New York. I cannot say more to you now than that I
begin to see my way through a sad, sad mystery. Here is my card.
Adieu!"

The bright glow left in the atmosphere by the brilliant sunset had quite
died away, but it was light enough for me to read the superscription:
"LE CHEVALIER ACHILLE ROMA."

I walked back to my lodgings in a manner probably quite sane to other
people, although the distance was compassed by myself in a condition of
complete unconsciousness as to how. Like the phantasmagoria of fated
events swept before my mind the train of complicated circumstances that
had led to my finding Aunt Edith's lost lover. And the beau