nd, and to have a good
deal of fun for my money.

I had a fine sixty horse-power motor-car, and usually travelled from
place to place on it, my friend Jack Marlowe, who had been at Oxford
with me, and whose father's estates marched with mine on the edge of
Dartmoor, frequently coming out to spend a week or two with me on the
roads. He was studying for the diplomatic service, but made many
excuses for holidays, which he invariably spent at my side. And we had
a merry time together, I can assure you.

For nearly three years I had led this life of erratic wandering,
returning to London only for a week or so in June, to see my lawyers
and put in an appearance for a few days at Carrington to interview old
Browning. And I must confess I found the old place deadly dull and
lonely.

Boodles, to which I belonged, just as my father had belonged, I found
full of pompous bores and old fogeys; and though at White's there was
a little more life and movement now they had built a new roof, yet I
preferred the merry recklessness of Monte Carlo, or the gaiety of the
white-and-gold casinos at Nice or Cannes.

Thus nearly three years went by, careless years of luxury and
idleness, years of living _a la carte_ at restaurants of the first
order, from the Reserve at Beaulieu to the Hermitage at Moscow, from
Armenonville in the Bois to Salvini's in Milan--years of the education
of an epicure.

The first incident of this strange history, however, occurred while I
was spending the early spring at Gardone. Possibly you, as an English
reader, have never heard of the place. If, however, you were
Austrian, you would know it as one of the most popular resorts on the
beautiful mountain-fringed Lake of Garda, that deep blue lake, half in
Italian territory and half in Austrian, with the quaint little town of
Desenzano at the Italian end, and Riva, with its square old
church-tower and big white hotels, at the extreme north.

Of all the spring resorts on the Italian lakes, Gardone appeals to the
visitor as one of the quietest and most picturesque. The Grand Hotel,
with its long terrace at the lake-side, is, during February and March,
filled with a gay crowd who spend most of their time in climbing the
steep mountain-sides towards the jealously guarded frontier, or taking
motor-boat excursions up and down the picturesque lake.

From the balcony of my room spread a panorama as beautiful as any in
Europe; more charming, indeed, than at Lugano or Bel