ridor, he encountered Mr. Sneyd.

"Just stottin', eh?" said the Englishman, taking an envelope from his
pocket. "Lucky I caught you. This is for you. I just saw the Cantess
and she teold me to give it you. Herry and read it and kem on t' the
Amairikin Baw. Chap I want you to meet. Eold Cooley's thyah too. Gawt in
with his tourin'-caw at noon."

"You will forgive, dear friend," wrote Madame de Vaurigard,
"if I ask you that we renounce our drive to-day. You see, I
wish to have that little dinner to-night and must make
preparation. Honorable Chandler Pedlow arrived this morning
from Paris and that droll Mr. Cooley I have learn is
coincidentally arrived also. You see I think it would be
very pleasant to have the dinner to welcome these friends on
their arrival. You will come surely--or I shall be so truly
miserable. You know it perhaps too well! We shall have a
happy evening if you come to console us for renouncing our
drive. A thousand of my prettiest wishes for you.

"Helene."

The signature alone consoled him. To have that note from her, to own it,
was like having one of her gloves or her fan. He would keep it forever,
he thought; indeed, he more than half expressed a sentiment to that
effect in the response which he wrote in the aquarium, while Sneyd
waited for him at a table near by. The Englishman drew certain
conclusions in regard to this reply, since it permitted a waiting
friend to consume three long tumblers of brandy-and-soda before it was
finished. However, Mr. Sneyd kept his reflections to himself, and, when
the epistle had been dispatched by a messenger, took the American's
arm and led him to the "American Bar" of the hotel, a region hitherto
unexplored by Mellin.

Leaning against the bar were Cooley and the man whom Mellin had seen
lolling beside Madame de Vaurigard in Cooley's automobile in Paris,
the same gross person for whom he had instantly conceived a strong
repugnance, a feeling not at once altered by a closer view.

Cooley greeted Mellin uproariously and Mr. Sneyd introduced the fat man.
"Mr. Mellin, the Honorable Chandler Pedlow," he said; nor was the shock
to the first-named gentleman lessened by young Cooley's adding, "Best
feller in the world!"

Mr. Pedlow's eyes were sheltered so deeply beneath florid rolls of flesh
that all one saw of them was an inscrutable gleam of blue; but, small
though they were, they were not shif