retorted the Colonel. "Fate has accustomed me to the
society of fools."

"Isn't it a pity to start quarrelling immediately after dinner, you
two," suggested their thoughtful daughter from the sofa, "you'll have
nothing left to amuse you for the rest of the evening."

"He didn't strike me as a conversationalist," said the lady who was
cousin to a baronet; "but he did pass the vegetables before he helped
himself. A little thing like that shows breeding."

"Or that he didn't know you and thought maybe you'd leave him half a
spoonful," laughed Augustus the wit.

"What I can't make out about him--" shouted the Colonel.

The stranger entered the room.

The Colonel, securing the evening paper, retired into a corner. The
highly coloured Kite, reaching down from the mantelpiece a paper fan,
held it coyly before her face. Miss Devine sat upright on the horse-hair
sofa, and rearranged her skirts.

"Know anything?" demanded Augustus of the stranger, breaking the
somewhat remarkable silence.

The stranger evidently did not understand. It was necessary for
Augustus, the witty, to advance further into that odd silence.

"What's going to pull off the Lincoln handicap? Tell me, and I'll go out
straight and put my shirt upon it."

"I think you would act unwisely," smiled the stranger; "I am not an
authority upon the subject."

"Not! Why they told me you were Captain Spy of the _Sporting Life_--in
disguise."

It would have been difficult for a joke to fall more flat. Nobody
laughed, though why Mr. Augustus Longcord could not understand, and
maybe none of his audience could have told him, for at Forty-eight
Bloomsbury Square Mr. Augustus Longcord passed as a humorist. The
stranger himself appeared unaware that he was being made fun of.

"You have been misinformed," assured him the stranger.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Augustus Longcord.

"It is nothing," replied the stranger in his sweet low voice, and passed
on.

"Well what about this theatre," demanded Mr. Longcord of his friend
and partner; "do you want to go or don't you?" Mr. Longcord was feeling
irritable.

"Goth the ticketh--may ath well," thought Isidore.

"Damn stupid piece, I'm told."

"Motht of them thupid, more or leth. Pity to wathte the ticketh," argued
Isidore, and the pair went out.

"Are you staying long in London?" asked Miss Kite, raising her practised
eyes towards the stranger.

"Not long," answered the stranger. "At least I do not know.