raight, quiet speech of
Englishmen. There was no flurry or palaver about this specimen. He spoke
as a man quite sure of himself and wholly independent of his fellow men.

"Ah, I remember you now," Merefleet said. "You came as Ralph Warrender's
guest to a club dinner in New York. Am I right?"

"Perfectly," said Seton. "You were the guest of the evening. You made a
good speech, I remember. You were looking horribly ill. I suppose that is
how I came to notice you particularly."

"I was ill," said Merefleet, "or I should have been out of New York
before that dinner came off. I always detested the place. And Warrender
would have done far better in my place."

"I am not an admirer of Warrender," said Seton bluntly.

Merefleet made no comment. He was never very free in the statement of his
opinion.

"The railway accident in which his wife was killed took place immediately
after that dinner, I believe?" he observed presently. "I remember hearing
of it when I was recovering."

"It was a shocking thing--that accident," said Seton thoughtfully. "It's
odd that Americans always manage to do that sort of thing on such a
gigantic scale."

"They do everything on a gigantic scale," said Merefleet. "What became of
Warrender afterwards? It was an awful business for him."

"I don't know anything about him," Seton answered, with a brevity that
seemed to betray lack of interest. "He was no friend of mine, though I
chanced to be his guest on that occasion. I was distantly connected with
his wife, and I inherited some of her money at her death. She was a rich
woman, as you probably know."

"So I heard. But I have never found New York gossip particularly
attractive."

Seton leant his elbow on the window-sill and gazed meditatively into the
night. "If it comes to that," he said slowly, "no gossip is exactly
edifying. And to be the victim of it is to be in the most undesirable
position under the sun."

It struck Merefleet that he uttered the words with some force, almost
with the deliberate intention of conveying a warning; and, being the
last man in the world to attempt to fathom the wholly irrelevant affairs
of his neighbour, he dropped into silence and began to smoke.

Seton sat motionless for some time. The murmur of a conversation that was
being sleepily sustained by two men in the room behind them created no
disturbing influence. Presently Seton spoke casually, but with that in
his tone which made Merefleet vaguely conscious