e average height, so they looked at one another over the
heads of many people, and in both their faces was something of the same
expression--the faint interest born of a relieved monotony. The girl
deliberately turned towards him. He was an unknown guest and alone.
There were times when her duties came quite easily.

"I am afraid that you are not amusing yourself," she remarked, with some
faint yet kindly note of condescension in her tone.

"You are very kind," he answered, his eyebrows slightly lifted. "I
certainly am not. But then I did not come here to amuse myself."

"Indeed? A sense of duty brought you, perhaps?"

"A sense of duty, beyond a doubt," the man assented politely.

She felt like passing on--but she also felt like staying, so she stayed.

"Cannot I help you towards the further accomplishment of your duty,
then?" she enquired.

He looked at her and the grim severity of his face was lightened by a
smile.

"You could help me more easily to forget it," he replied.

She opened her lips, hesitated and closed them again. Already she had
recognised the fact that this was not a man to be snubbed. Neither had
she, notwithstanding her momentary irritation, any real desire to do so.

"You do not know many people here?"

"I know no one," he confessed.

"I am Elisabeth Landon," she told him. "Mr. Foley is my uncle. My
mother and I live with him and always help him to entertain."

"Hence your interest in a lonely stranger," he remarked. "Please have
no qualms about me. I am always interested when I am permitted to watch
my fellow creatures, especially when the types are novel to me."

She looked at him searchingly for a moment. As yet she had not
succeeded in placing him. His features were large but well-shaped, his
cheek-bones a little high, his forehead massive, his deep-set eyes
bright and marvellously penetrating. He had a mouth long and firm, with
a slightly humorous twist at the corners. His hair was black and
plentiful. He might have been of any age between thirty-five and forty.
His limbs and body were powerful; his head was set with the poise of an
emperor. His clothes were correct and well worn, he was entirely at his
ease. Yet Elisabeth, who was an observant person, looked at him and
wondered. He would have been more at home, she thought, out in the
storms of life than in her uncle's drawing-rooms. Yet what was he? He
lacked the trimness of the soldier; of the debonair smartness of the
modern