of an American accent tinging his brogue,
added: "Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Jessop."

Without my seeing how he did it exactly, Mr. Burke had arranged the
chairs about his table so that we all sat at lunch there together. But
he changed his seat so that it was Mr. Jessop who sat with his face to
the light, opposite to the man I had known just a very little longer.

Really, it does seem odd to think that I am the same Beatrice Lovelace
who used to live at No. 45 Laburnum Grove! There, from year's end to
year's end, I never exchanged a single word with anything that you
could describe as a young man!

And now, to parody the old story about the 'bus driver, "Young men are
no treat to me!" Within forty-eight hours I have had one propose to me,
one taking me out for a walk on the Embankment and arranging to bring me
for this motor expedition to-day, and a third having lunch with me and
the second!

It was a very funny lunch. And not a very comfortable one. The two men
talked without ceasing about automobiles, and "makes," and garages, and
speeds, and the difference between American and English workmen. (Mr.
Burke really does seem to know something about America.) But I felt that
the air of that shady coffee-room was simply quivering with the thoughts
of both of them on very different subjects. Mr. Jessop was thinking:
"Now, see here! Who's this young Irish aristocrat? He seems to be on
such perfectly friendly terms of equality with my cousin's maid. How's
this?"

Mr. Burke was thinking: "Who the dickens is this fellow? How is it that
Miss Million's maid seems to be let loose for the whole day without her
mistress, and a young man and a car to herself?"

The keynote of the next half-hour might be summed up in Kipling's
phrase, "Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he dare not say!"

My heart meanwhile was bursting with the wild longing to find out if Mr.
Burke knew anything at all of the whereabouts of my mistress.

I decided that he did not, for if he had wouldn't he have mentioned
something to do with her?

As it was, which I am sure was buzzing in all of our brains, the name
Million did not pass any of our lips!

The men went out together, apparently on the most friendly terms, to pay
the landlady and exchange inspection of the "automobiles." By some
manoeuvring or other Mr. Burke contrived to come back first into the
coffee-room where I stood alone before the mirror readjusting the black