e for me, you might
say that it was all right, you know. Quite the customary thing with us
over there. And you might say, generally, who I am."

"I see," said the consul deliberately. "Tell them you're Bob Gray, with
more money and time than you know what to do with; that you have a
fine taste for yachting and shooting and racing, and amusing yourself
generally; that you find that THEY amuse you, and you would like your
luxury and your dollars to stand as an equivalent to their independence
and originality; that, being a good republican yourself, and recognizing
no distinction of class, you don't care what this may mean to them, who
are brought up differently; that after their cruise with you you don't
care what life, what friends, or what jealousies they return to; that
you know no ties, no responsibilities beyond the present, and that you
are not a marrying man."

"Look here, I say, aren't you making a little too much of this?" said
Gray stiffly.

The consul laughed. "I should be glad to know that I am."

Gray rose. "We'll be dropping down the river to-morrow," he said, with
a return of his usual lightness, "and I reckon I'll be toddling down to
the wharf. Good-bye, if I don't see you again."

He passed out. As the consul glanced from the window he observed,
however, that Mr. Gray was "toddling" in quite another direction than
the wharf. For an instant he half regretted that he had not suggested,
in some discreet way, the conclusion he had arrived at after witnessing
the girl's parting with the middle-aged passenger the day before. But he
reflected that this was something he had only accidentally overseen, and
was the girl's own secret.

II.

When the summer had so waxed in its fullness that the smoke of factory
chimneys drifted high, permitting glimpses of fairly blue sky; when the
grass in St. Kentigern's proudest park took on a less sober green in the
comfortable sun, and even in the thickest shade there was no chilliness,
the good St. Kentigerners recognized that the season had arrived to go
"down the river," and that it was time for them to betake themselves,
with rugs, mackintoshes, and umbrellas, to the breezy lochs and misty
hillsides for which the neighborhood of St. Kentigern is justly famous.
So when it came to pass that the blinds were down in the highest places,
and the most exclusive pavements of St. Kentigern were echoless and
desolate, the consul heroically tore himself from the weak deligh