ing come, Livingstone weakly but
deliberately evaded it by engaging in an animated conversation with Mr.
Hutchinson Port in regard to the precise number of minutes and seconds
that a duck ought to remain before the fire; and Mr. Smith--having
partaken of his own excellent wines and meats until his whole being was
aglow with a benevolent friendliness--contented himself with thinking
that, no matter who his guest was, he certainly was a capital fellow;
and that to cross-question him as to his name, at least until the
evening was at an end, would be a gross outrage upon the laws of
hospitality.

Livingstone, however, had the grace to feel a good deal ashamed of
himself as they returned to the drawing-room. In all that had gone
before, he had been a victim of circumstances. He had an uncomfortable
conviction that his position now was not wholly unlike that of an
impostor. But as he pushed aside the portiere he beheld a pair of blue
eyes which, he flattered himself, betrayed an expression of pleased
expectancy--and his compunctions vanished.

There was only a little time left to them, for the evening was almost
at an end. Their talk came back to travel. Did she like travelling in
America? he asked. Yes, she liked it very much indeed, "only "--as a
sudden memory of a past experience flashed into her mind--"one does
sometimes meet such dreadfully horrid people!"

They were sitting, as they talked, in a narrow space between a table and
the wall, made narrower by the presence of an unused chair. Just as this
memory was aroused, some one tried to push by them, and Livingstone,
rising, lifted the obstructing chair away. To find a clear space in
which to put it down, he lifted it across the table; and for a moment he
stood erect, holding the chair out before him at arm's-length.

When he seated himself and turned again to speak to Grace, he was
startled to find that her face and shoulders, and even her arms--her
arms and shoulders were delectable--were crimson; and in her eyes he
found at last the look of recognition that he had hoped for earlier in
the evening, but that now he had ceased to expect. Recognition of this
emphatic sort he certainly had not expected at all.

"You--you see," she said, "I al--always have thought that you were
a robber and a murderer, and shocking things like that. And I didn't
really see you that day, except as you walked away, holding up that
horrid little man, kicking--just as you held up the chai