He was already lunching when I sat down with Susan at my table. Of course I placed Susan with her back to him; but I didn’t notice at first that I had also placed her opposite a mirror wherein she could look at him far better than I could myself. He was too far off for me to hear him clearly; but I made out that he insistently addressed his English waiter in lamentable French. I hung my head for my country and its aristocracy, and thought more meanly than ever of its public schools. He consumed a succession of expensive dishes, and his plate was ostentatiously flanked by a bottle of champagne. "It’s a whole bottle, Miss," whispered Susan, regarding it with reverence in the mirror; "not one of those little ones." "If you can see him, he can see you, Susan," I said severely. "Whoever he is, he can be no gentleman to follow you like this. Eat your cutlet, and keep your eyes on your plate. And don’t dawdle. I want to go upstairs again as quick as we can." For one nasty moment, Susan hung on the very brink of rebellion. But habit or coquetry, or self-interest or pure obedience, or genuine modesty, prevailed; and she answered with perfect meekness: "Very well, Miss, I’m ready now." It spoilt my lunch; but I got up and we both went out. I asked for coffee and the French time-table to be brought into the drawing-room, where he wasn’t likely to come. There, I sat down to work out plans in quiet. But the quiet didn’t last. Within five minutes, his large voice broke out angrily in the hall. Susan shivered on the lounge beside me. His clamour was like the vicious baying of an extra-sized wolf newly cheated of a nice young lamb. "Oh, Miss!" moaned Susan, as white as a sheet. "He’s coming in here! Whatever shall I do?" "Sit still," I snapped. "Hold your tongue. Let us listen." Straining my ears, I discerned that the noise was a composite one, and that the three chief contributors were the Brute in Grey, the waiter, and some third party--probably the manager. "It’s a [----] swindle!" roared the Grey One. (The blank stands for something far worse than "damned.") "I told the gentleman it was _à la carte_," put in the waiter. "You’re a common impostor!" said the manager. I edged along the lounge and peeped through the half-open door. The Grey One was standing with his legs apart, like the Colossus of Rhodes. Too much meat and drink had combined with anger and fear to turn his evil face nearly purple. At a safe distance stood the waiter, pale and excited, with the Grey One’s bill on a silver salver. Two other waiters and the porter were massed across the doorway in case the Grey One should take to his long, horrid legs. The manager, implacable and contemptuous, leaned against his office door. "What’s all this beastly row about?" asked one of the guests of the hotel, a young Englishman, coming irritably out of the _salle-à-manger_.