ame I did not
catch. Then she must change at the junction. Yes, but there would be no
difficulty because she was accustomed to travelling, she had travelled in
China, India, Egypt and America. No doubt she was gifted by nature with
that happy temperament which enables its possessor to make friends
easily, and her extensive travels had provided opportunities for its
cultivation. I supposed the three gentlemen to be accountants or
advocates or perhaps engineers; but I thought from her manner that she
would have been just as much at her ease if they had been carabinieri. I
heard her tell them she was twenty-two; she must have been very young
when she began her travels.

While the waiter was making out our bills, one of the gentlemen begged
her to grant him a favour. She smiled in her frank open way as an
encouragement to him to name it, and he declared that he should consider
it an honour if she would permit him to pay for her luncheon. The lady
accepted his generosity, and granted his request with a smile of such
queenly condescension that I had a vision of great Elizabeth stepping
upon Raleigh's cloak.

Presently this gentleman went and sat by himself at a table for two and
the lady joined him. This appeared to me a little odd; he might just as
well have sat at her table, or have invited her to sit at his with the
other two gentlemen, there was room and it would have been less marked.
But they seemed to prefer to start a little colony of their own, as it
were, on neutral ground. The gentleman made another proposal: A glass of
wine? With pleasure. So the waiter brought it, and then the lady
accepted a cigarette.

At the junction the lady and the gentleman both got out, and I saw him
help her into her train, which started first for the place whose name I
had not caught. Then he got into his train, which was labelled
"Castellinaria," and I went on without changing. A few days later,
however, I returned to the junction, changed there and followed the
accountant to Castellinaria, where I was going to see my friend Antonio,
who happened to be engaged there on an engineering job. In the evening I
told him about the lady in the restaurant-car. He laughed and said:

"But this lady is a particular friend of mine. She is often here, she
returned two days ago and told me all this herself, only last night. If
you would like to make her acquaintance I will take you to see her."

So we went to her hotel, which was