Nothing of the least importance occurred, save the Count’s marvellous exhibition of how to behave at afternoon tea, until the refection was nearly over; and then, during a brief pause in the talk, Cecil, who was sitting to the left of Madame Lawrence, looked sharply round at the right shoulder of his tweed coat; he repeated the gesture a second and yet a third time. “What is the matter with the man?” asked Eve Fincastle. Both she and Kitty were extremely bright, animated, and even excited. “Nothing. I thought I saw something on my shoulder, that’s all,” said Cecil. “Ah! It’s only a bit of thread.” And he picked off the thread with his left hand and held it before Madame Lawrence. “See! It’s a piece of thin black silk, knotted. At first I took it for an insect--you know how queer things look out of the corner of your eye. Pardon!” He had dropped the fragment on to Madame Lawrence’s black silk dress. “Now it’s lost.” “If you will excuse me, kind friends,” said Madame Lawrence, “I will go.” She spoke hurriedly, and as though in mental distress. “Poor thing!” Kitty Sartorius exclaimed when the widow had gone. “She’s still dreadfully upset”; and Kitty and Eve proceeded jointly to relate the story of the diamond bracelet, upon which hitherto they had kept silence (though with difficulty), out of regard for Madame Lawrence’s feelings. Cecil made almost no comment. The Count, with the sympathetic excitability of his race, walked up and down the winter-garden, asseverating earnestly that such clumsiness amounted to a crime; then he grew calm and confessed that he shared the optimism of the police as to the recovery of the bracelet; lastly he complimented Kitty on her equable demeanour under this affliction. “Do you know, Count,” said Cecil Thorold, later, after they had all four ascended to the drawing-room overlooking the Grande Place, “I was quite surprised when I saw at tea that you had to be introduced to Madame Lawrence.” “Why so, my dear Mr. Thorold?” the Count inquired suavely. “I thought I had seen you together in Ostend a few days ago.” The Count shook his wonderful head. “Perhaps you have a brother----?” Cecil paused. “No,” said the Count. “But it is a favourite theory of mine that everyone has his double somewhere in the world.” Previously the Count had been discussing Planchette--he was a great authority on the supernatural, the sub-conscious, and the subliminal. He now deviated gracefully to the discussion of the theory of doubles. “I suppose you aren’t going out for a walk, dear, before dinner?” said Eve to Kitty. “No, dear,” said Kitty, positively. “I think I shall,” said Eve. And her glance at Cecil Thorold intimated in the plainest possible manner that she wished not only to have a companion for a stroll, but to leave Kitty and the Count in dual solitude.