ard enough nowadays to keep body and skirt together. _Have_
you secured that _coupe_ at Ostend?'

[Illustration: A MOST URBANE AND OBLIGING CONTINENTAL GENTLEMAN.]

We got into our first-class carriage. It was clean and comfortable; but
the Cantankerous Old Lady made the porter mop the floor, and fidgeted
and worried till we slid out of the station. Fortunately, the only other
occupant of the compartment was a most urbane and obliging Continental
gentleman--I say Continental, because I couldn't quite make out whether
he was French, German, or Austrian--who was anxious in every way to meet
Lady Georgina's wishes. Did madame desire to have the window open? Oh,
certainly, with pleasure; the day was so sultry. Closed a little more?
_Parfaitement_, there _was_ a current of air, _il faut l'admettre_.
Madame would prefer the corner? No? Then perhaps she would like this
valise for a footstool? _Permettez_--just thus. A cold draught runs so
often along the floor in railway carriages. This is Kent that we
traverse; ah, the garden of England! As a diplomat, he knew every nook
of Europe, and he echoed the _mot_ he had accidentally heard drop from
madame's lips on the platform: no country in the world so delightful as
England!

'Monsieur is attached to the Embassy in London?' Lady Georgina inquired,
growing affable.

He twirled his grey moustache: a waxed moustache of great distinction.
'No, madame; I have quitted the diplomatic service; I inhabit London now
_pour mon agrement_. Some of my compatriots call it _triste_; for me, I
find it the most fascinating capital in Europe. What gaiety! What
movement! What poetry! What mystery!'

'If mystery means fog, it challenges the world,' I interposed.

He gazed at me with fixed eyes. 'Yes, mademoiselle,' he answered, in
quite a different and markedly chilly voice. 'Whatever your great
country attempts--were it only a fog--it achieves consummately.'

I have quick intuitions. I felt the foreign gentleman took an
instinctive dislike to me.

To make up for it, he talked much, and with animation, to Lady Georgina.
They ferreted out friends in common, and were as much surprised at it as
people always are at that inevitable experience.

'Ah yes, madame, I recollect him well in Vienna. I was there at the
time, attached to our Legation. He was a charming man; you read his
masterly paper on the Central Problem of the Dual Empire?'

'You were in Vienna then!' the Cantankerous Old Lady mused