"Most undoubtedly. By the way, Hamlyn, who's your friend?"

Surely this was an innocent enough question; but little Hamlyn went
red from the edge of his clipped whisker on the right to the edge of
his mathematically equal whisker on the left.

"Friend!" said he, in an angry tone. "He's not a friend of mine. I
only met him on the Riviera."

"That," I admitted, "does not, happily, constitute in itself a
friendship."

"And he won a hundred louis of me in the train between Cannes and
Monte Carlo."

"Not bad going, that," observed Denny, in an approving tone.

"Is he, then, _un grec_?" asked Mrs. Hipgrave, who loves a scrap of
French.

"In both senses, I believe," answered Hamlyn, viciously.

"And what's his name?" said I.

"Really, I don't recollect," said Hamlyn, rather petulantly.

"It doesn't matter," observed Beatrice, attacking her oysters, which
had now made their appearance.

"My dear Beatrice," I remonstrated, "you are the most charming
creature in the world, but not the only one. You mean that it doesn't
matter to you."

"Oh, don't be tiresome. It doesn't matter to you, either, you know. Do
go away, and leave me to dine in peace."

"Half a minute," said Hamlyn. "I thought I'd got it just now, but it's
gone again. Look here, though; I believe it's one of those long things
that end in 'poulos.'"

"Oh, it ends in 'poulos,' does it?" said I, in a meditative tone.

"My dear Charlie," said Beatrice, "I shall end in Bedlam, if you're so
very tedious. What in the world I shall do when I'm married, I don't
know."

"My dearest!" said Mrs. Hipgrave; and a stage direction might add:
"Business with brows, as before."

"'Poulos'?" I repeated.

"Could it be Constantinopoulos?" asked Hamlyn, with a nervous
deference to my Hellenic learning.

"It might, conceivably," I hazarded, "be Constantine Stefanopoulos."

"Then," said Hamlyn, "I shouldn't wonder if it was. Anyhow, the less
you see of him, Wheatley, the better. Take my word for that."

"But," I objected--and I must admit that I have a habit of thinking
that everybody follows my train of thought--"it's such a small place
that, if he goes, I should be almost bound to meet him."

"What's such a small place?" cried Beatrice, with emphasized despair.

"Why, Neopalia, of course," said I.

"Why should anybody except you be so insane as to go there?" she
asked.

"If he's the man I think, he comes from there," I explained, as I rose
for the last time