“Rather. It was comfortable enough till we reached Irun, but there I got out for a Spanish cigar, and when I returned, the train was so packed that I was obliged to utilize a first-class ticket in a third-class car. None of the people who lunched at the buffet were able to get back. I suppose three hundred were left. There was almost a riot. The station-master said that Irun was the head of the line, and to reserve a seat one must sit in it. Of course those who had seats were hugely amused at those who had none. One man, a Frenchman, bullied the station-master dreadfully. He said it was every kind of an outrage; that he ought to put on more cars; that he was incompetent; that he was imbecile; that he didn’t know his business. ‘It’s the law,’ said the station-master. ‘I don’t care that for your law!’ cried the Frenchman. ‘But the Préfet, sir.’ ‘To blazes with your Préfet!’ But that was too strong. The Frenchman might abuse what he saw fit, but the Préfet evidently was sacred. I suppose it was treasonable to speak of him in that style. In any event, the station-master called up a file of soldiers and had the Frenchman led away. The on-lookers were simply frantic with delight. If the Frenchman had only been shot before their eyes it would indeed have been a charming prelude to a bull fight.” And then with an air that suggested retrospects of unexpressed regret, he added pensively, “I have never seen a man shot.” “No?” said Milly, boldly; “no more have I. Not that I want to, though,” she hastened to explain. “It must be horrid.” Lenox looked up at her and then his eyes wandered to Maida, and rested caressingly in her own. But the caress was transient. Immediately he turned and busied himself with his plate. “Are you to be in Biarritz long?” Mr. Incoul asked. The tone was perfectly courteous, friendly, even, but at the moment from the very abruptness of the question Lenox feared that the caress had been intercepted and something of the mute drama divined. Mentally he arranged Mr. Incoul as one constantly occupied in repeating _J’ai de bon tabac, tu n’en auras pas_, and it was his design to disarm that gentleman of any suspicion he might harbor that his good tobacco, in this instance at least, was an envied possession or one over which he would be called to play the sentinel. The rôle of _mari sage_ was frequent enough on the Continent, but few knew better than Lenox Leigh that it is rarely enacted in the States, and his intuitions had told him long before that it was one for which Mr. Incoul was ill adapted. Yet between the _mari sage_ and the suspicionless husband there is a margin, and it was on that margin that Lenox determined that Mr. Incoul should tread. “No,” he answered at once, and without any visible sign of preoccupation. “No, a day or two at most; I am on my way to Andalucia.” Blydenburg, as usual, was immediately interested. “It’s very far, isn’t it?” he panted.