“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. It depends.” An unusual quiet had invaded the drawing-room of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, generally noisy with strident voices about this hour. The Colonel remained engrossed in his paper. Mrs. Devine sat with her plump white hands folded on her lap, whether asleep or not it was impossible to say. The lady who was cousin to a baronet had shifted her chair beneath the gasolier, her eyes bent on her everlasting crochet work. The languid Miss Devine had crossed to the piano, where she sat fingering softly the tuneless keys, her back to the cold barely-furnished room.