I do not know how long it was that Breckenridge Sewall continued to gaze at me, how long I sat undisturbed beneath the fire of his eyes. At any rate it was he who broke the tension first. He leaned forward and drew from his waistcoat pocket a gold cigarette case. "Do you object?" he asked. "Certainly not," I replied, with a tiny shrug. And then abruptly, just as he was to return the case to his pocket, he leaned forward again. "I beg your pardon--won't _you_?" And he offered _me_ the cigarettes, his eyes narrowed upon me. It was not the custom for young girls of my age to smoke cigarettes. It was not considered good form for a debutante to do anything of that sort. I had so far refused all cocktails and wines at dinners. However, I knew how to manage a cigarette. As a lark at boarding-school I had consumed a quarter of an inch of as many as a half-dozen cigarettes. In some amateur theatricals the winter before, in which I took the part of a young man, I had bravely smoked through half of one, and made my speeches too. What this man had said of Hilton and its provincialism was in my mind now. I meant no wickedness, no harm. I took one of the proffered cigarettes with the grand indifference of having done it many times before. Mr. Sewall watched me closely, and when he produced a match, lit it, and stretched it out toward me in the hollow of his hand. I leaned forward and simply played over again my well-learned act of the winter before. Instead of the clapping of many hands and a curtain-call, which had pleased me very much last winter, my applause today came in a less noisy way, but was quite as satisfying. "Look here," softly exclaimed Breckenridge Sewall. "Say, who are you, anyway?" Of course I wasn't stupid enough to tell him, and when I saw that he was on the verge of announcing his identity, I exclaimed: "Oh, don't, please. I'd much rather not know." "Oh, you don't know then?" "Are you Mr. Jackson?" I essayed innocently. "No, I'm not Buck Jackson, but he's a pal of mine. I'm----" "Oh, please," I exclaimed again. "Don't spoil it!" "Spoil it!" he repeated a little dazed. "Say, will you talk English?" "I mean," I explained, carelessly tossing away now into the grass the nasty little thing that was making my throat smart, "I mean, don't spoil my adventure. Life has so few. To walk down a little path for the purpose of looking at a view, and instead to run across a stranger who may be anything from a bandit to an Italian Count is so--so romantic." "Romantic!" he repeated. He wasn't a bit good at repartee. "Who are you, anyway?" "Why, I'm any one from a peasant to an heiress." "You're a darned attractive girl, anyhow!" he ejaculated, and as lacking in subtlety as this speech was, I prized it as sign of my adversary's surrender.