"Never mind my little stories," said Langholm, hastily; "I've just finished a long one, and the very thought of fiction makes me sick." "Well, you've got facts to turn to for a change, and for once they really do seem as strange as the other thing. Lucky bargee! Have you had her under the microscope all the summer? Ye gods, what a part of Mrs.--" "Drink up," said Langholm, grimly, as the champagne made an opportune appearance; "and now tell me who that fellow is who's opening the piano, and since when you've started a musical dinner." The big room that the screen divided had a grand piano in the dining half, for use upon those Saturday evenings for which the old club was still famous, but rarely touched during the working days of the week. Yet even now a dark and cadaverous young man was raising the top of the piano, slowly and laboriously, as though it were too heavy for him. Valentine Venn looked over his shoulder. "Good God!" said he. "Another fact worth most folks' fiction--another coincidence you wouldn't dare to use!" "Why--who is it?" Venn's answer was to hail the dark, thin youth with rude geniality. The young fellow hesitated, almost shrank, but came shyly forward in the end. Langholm noted that he looked very ill, that his face was as sensitive as it was thin and pale, but his expression singularly sweet and pleasing. "Severino," said Venn, with a play-actor's pomp, "let me introduce you to Charles Langholm, the celebrated novelist--'whom not to know is to argue yourself unknown.'" "Which is the champion _non sequitur_ of literature," added Langholm, with literary arrogance, as he took the lad's hand cordially in his own, only to release it hurriedly before he crushed such slender fingers to their hurt. "Mr. Langholm," pursued Venn, "is the hero of that paragraph"--Langholm kicked him under the table--"that--that paragraph about his last book, you know. Severino, Langholm, is the best pianist we have had in the club since I have been a member, and you will say the same yourself in another minute. He always plays to us when he drops in to dine, and you may think yourself lucky that he has dropped in to-night." "But where does the coincidence come in?" asked Langholm, as the young fellow returned to the piano with a rather sad shake of the head. "What!" cried Venn, below his breath; "do you mean to say you are a friend of Mrs. Minchin's, or whatever her name is now, and that you never heard of Severino?" "No," replied Langholm, his heart in an instantaneous flutter. "Who is he?" "The man she wanted to nurse the night her husband was murdered--the cause of the final row between them! His name was kept out of the papers, but that's the man."