Scant enough it was, as corroboration for so outrageous a facture as the cognomen Daddleskink, but it served to convince the doubter. "At least, you have the satisfaction of being unusual," she consoled him. "If you regard it as a satisfaction. Can you blame me for denouncing my fate? How will you like introducing such a name to your friends?" "I'm not going to introduce you to my friends. I'm going to keep you for myself. Solitary confinement." "_Solitude à deux?_ That's a mitigation. Oh, beautiful--I mean to say plain but worthy _incognita_, suppose I ferret out the mystery of your identity for myself?" "I put you on honor. You're to ask no questions of any one. You're not even to listen when anyone speaks to me. Do you promise?" "May my eyes be blasted out and my hopes wrecked by never seeing you again, if I be not faithful," he said. But Fate arranges these matters to suit its more subtle purposes. The Wondrous Vision had dismissed her slave, giving him rendezvous for the next morning,--he had pleaded in vain for that evening,--and he was composing himself to a thoughtful promenade, and to the building of air-castles of which the other occupant was Little Miss Grouch, when he became aware of a prospective head-on collision. He side-stepped. The approaching individual did the same. He sheered off to port. The other followed. In desperation he made a plunge to starboard and was checked at the rail by the pursuer. "I wish to speak to you," announced a cold and lofty voice. The Tyro emerged from his glorious abstraction, to find himself confronted by a middle-aged lady with violent pretensions to youth, mainly artificial. Some practitioners of the toilet-table paint in the manner of Sargent; others follow the school of Cecilia Beaux; but this lady's color-scheme was unmistakably that of Turner in his most expansive mood of sunset, burning ships, and volcanic eruptions. By way of compensation, she wore an air of curdled virtue, and carried her nose at such an angle that one expected to see her at any moment set the handle of her lorgnette on the tip thereof, and oblige the company with a few unparalleled feats of balancing. Surprise held the Tyro's tongue in leash for the moment. Then he came to. Here was another unexpected lady evidently relying upon that tricky memory of his. Very well: this time it should not betray him! "How do you do?" he said, seizing her hand and shaking it warmly. "I'm so glad to see you again." She withdrew the captured member indignantly. "Again? Where have you ever seen me before?" she demanded. "Just what I was trying to think," murmured the Tyro. "Where _have_ I seen you?" The colorful lady lifted her glasses and her nose at one and the same moment. "I am Mrs. Denyse," she informed him. "Mrs. Charlton Denyse. You may know the name." "I may," admitted the Tyro, unfavorably impressed by the manner in which she was lorgnetting him, "but I don't at the moment recall it."