e
distance, but nothing of grandeur. Poplars marched along with us on
either side, primly on guard, and puritanical, though all the while
their myriad little fingers seemed to twinkle over the keyboard of an
invisible piano, playing a rapid waltz.

Then we came at last into Aix-les-Bains, where I had spent a merry
month during a "long," in Oxford days. I had not been back since.

Already the height of the season was over, for it was September now,
but the gay little watering-place seemed crowded still, and in our
knickerbockers, with our pack-mule and donkeys, and their attendants,
we must have added a fantastic note to the dance-music which the very
breezes play among tree-branches at light-hearted Aix.

"Pretty, isn't it?" I remarked indifferently, as we passed through
some of the most fashionable streets.

"Yes, very pretty," said the Boy. "But what is there that one misses?
There's something--I'm not sure what. Is it that the place looks
huddled together? You can't see its face, for its features. There are
people like that. You are introduced to them; you think them charming;
yet when you've been away for a little while you couldn't for your
life recall the shape of their nose, or mouth, or eyes. I feel it is
going to be so with Aix, for me."

The villa which the Contessa had taken for a few weeks before her
annual flitting for Monte Carlo, was on the way to Marlioz, and we had
been told exactly how to find it. Still silent as to my ultimate
intentions, I tramped along with the Boy beside me, Joseph and
Innocentina bringing up the rear. We would know the villa from the
description we had been given, and having passed out of the town, we
presently saw it; a little dun-coloured house, standing up slender and
graceful among trees, like a charming grey rabbit on the watch by its
hidden warren in the woods.

"I'm tired, aren't you?" asked the Boy. "I shall be glad to rest."

Now was my time. "I shan't be able to rest quite yet," said I, with a
careless air. "I shall see you in, say 'How-de-do' to the Contessa,
and then I must be off to the hotel where I used to stop. I remember
it as delightful."

"Why," exclaimed the Boy blankly, "but I thought--I thought we were
going to stay with the Contessa!"

"You are, but I'm not," I explained calmly. "My friends the Winstons
may very likely turn up at the same hotel" (this was true on the
principle that anything, no matter how unexpected, _may_ happen); "and
if they s