al time, for Hinge in household matters was a
perfect martinet, and all my home affairs were as punctual as a clock.
Then, at as early an hour as I dared to venture on, I walked to Lady
Rollinson's house. The servant who answered my summons at the door had
been in the habit of skipping on one side at once, and throwing the door
open in something of an excess of hospitality. I had sometimes even felt
a touch of humorous anger at the man; for his fashion of receiving me
had seemed to indicate that he was in possession of the secret of the
position, and it was as if his flourish of welcome showed an approval of
my suit. But to-day he held the door half open, and, before I could get
out a word of inquiry, said, "Not at hom?"

"Neither Lady Rollinson nor Miss Rossano?" I asked him.

"Not at home, sir," the man repeated. He looked conscious beneath my
eye, and his manner was distinctly embarrassed.

"Are you quite sure of that?" I asked him. "Kindly go and see." The man
looked more discomposed than ever, but he said for the third time: "Not
at home, sir." And in the face of this repeated declaration it seemed
useless to inquire again. I walked away, a little puzzled by the man's
manner. I had heard of no intended visit, and so far as I could guess I
knew of every plan which Violet and Lady Rollinson had formed. It is not
usual for an accepted suitor to be met at the door of his _fiancee's_
house with that curt formula, and I went away dissatisfied and
wondering, turning my steps homeward. I had made up my mind to dismiss
the whole circumstance and to write to Violet, and I was walking up the
stairs which led to my chambers, in haste to put that little project
into execution, when I ran full against a stranger on the landing. He
raised his hat with an apology, and I was in the act of doing the same
when his foreign accent induced me to look more closely at him. He was a
tall, dark man, very gentlemanly to look at and irreproachably dressed.
In a dark, saturnine way he was handsome, and recalling Hinge's
statement that he would have known the ugly mug of our fellow-lodger
among a million, I settled within my own mind that this could not be the
man; but I still observed him with a little interest in the certainty
that if not the man himself, he was at least a visitor. Hinge was at the
door when I reached it.

"Did you spot him, sir?" he asked, eagerly. "That's him as you ran into
on the stairs--Sacovitch."

I answered that