Two men appeared to be travelling in company with Rowan; one a man of something beyond his own age--the other five or six years younger; both respectable but by no means affluent in appearance. All were well dressed and gentlemanly in aspect; but neither Rowan nor either of his companions gave the impression of what might be designated as the "first circles of society," even in the great grain-metropolis of the West. "H. T.," the observer, had fixed his eyes so closely on the male party in that singular meeting, that he probably lost the answering expression of the lady's face and did not know whether or not she had returned that glance of wondering interest. Something like disappointment at that lost opportunity may have been the cause of his biting his lip a little nervously as he took his way, with the rest of the new-comers, into the hall and reception-room, waiting opportunity for the booking of names and the assignment of chambers. Some of those in waiting no doubt found the tedium materially diminished by finding themselves, in the reception-room, at that close of a blazing day of July, standing or sitting with a decidedly grateful feeling before a quarter-of-a-cord of birchen wood, blazing away in the open fire-place with that peculiar warmth and hearty geniality so little known to this coal-burning age, but so well remembered by those who knew the old baronial halls of republican America in a time long passed away. Not many minutes after the rencontre that has been described, the crowd had vanished from the piazza of the Profile House, the coaches had driven away, the baggage was being rapidly removed within doors, and the tired and hungry new-comers were booked for rooms and clearing away the soil and dust of travel, preparatory to supper. Soon the crockery and cutlery jingled in the long dining-room, and the flaky tea-biscuits steamed for those who hurried down to catch them in their full perfection. It was a desultory supper and a somewhat hurried one, for the moonrise was coming--that rise of the full moon which so many had promised themselves, and for which, indeed, not a few of the arrivals of that evening had timed their visit to the mountains. Then, hunger has but little curiosity, and surveys and recognitions were both waited for until the broader light and greater leisure of the morning; and probably of the dozens of old residents (a week is "old residence" at a watering-place, be it remembered, and a fortnight confers all the privileges of the habitue)--probably of the dozens of old residents and new-comers who had acquaintances among the opposite class, not two found time or thought for seeking out familiar faces during that period when the sharpened appetite was so notably in the ascendant.