o the well-known folk of whom there seemed no dearth; in the ten or
twenty minutes that we sat together he further revealed himself as a
copious gossip, with a wide net alike for the big fish and for the
smallest fry. There was a sheepish gentleman with a twitching face, and
a shaven cleric in close attendance; the former a rich brand plucked
from burning by the latter, whose temporal reward was the present trip,
so Quinby assured me during the time it took them to pass before our
eyes through the now emptying hall. A delightfully boyish young American
came inquiring waggishly for his "best girl"; next moment I was given to
understand that he meant his bride, who was ten times too good for him,
with further trivialities to which the dressing-bell put a timely
period. There was no sign of my Etonian when I went upstairs.

As I dressed in my small low room, with its sloping ceiling of varnished
wood, at the top of the house, I felt that after all I had learnt
nothing really new respecting that disturbing young gentleman. Quinby
had already proved himself such an arrant gossip as to discount every
word that he had said before I placed him in his proper type: it is one
which I have encountered elsewhere, that of the middle-aged bachelor who
will and must talk, and he had confessed his celibacy almost in his
first breath; but a more pronounced specimen of the type I am in no
hurry to meet again. If, however, there was some comfort in the thought
of his more than probable exaggerations, there was none at all in the
knowledge that these would be, if they had not already been, poured into
every tolerant ear in the place, if anything more freely than into mine.

I was somewhat late for dinner, but the scandalous couple were later
still, and all the evening I saw nothing of them. That, however, was
greatly due to this fellow Quinby, whose determined offices one could
hardly disdain after once accepting favours from him. In the press after
dinner I saw his ferret's face peering this way and that, a good head
higher than any other, and the moment our eyes met he began elbowing his
way toward me. Only an ingrate would have turned and fled; and for the
next hour or two I suffered Quinby to exploit my wounds and me for a
good deal more than our intrinsic value. To do the man justice, however,
I had no fault to find with the very pleasant little circle into which
he insisted on ushering me, at one end of the glazed veranda, and should