Starling, for instance, seemed queerly placed
here. Count Sabatini was another of the guests who seemed somehow to
be outside the little circle. For minutes together he sat sometimes
in grim silence. About him, too, there was always a curious air of
detachment. Rosario was making the small conversation with his
neighbor which the occasion seemed to demand, but he, too, appeared
to talk as one who had more weighty matters troubling his brain. It
was a fancy of Arnold's, perhaps, but it was a fancy of which he
could not rid himself. He glanced towards his employer and a curious
feeling of sympathy stirred him. The man was unhappy and ill at
ease. He had lost his air of slight pomposity, the air with which he
entered his offices in the morning, strutted about the warehouse,
went out to lunch with a customer, and which he somehow seemed to
lose as the time came for returning to his home. Once or twice he
glanced towards his wife, half nervously, half admiringly. Once she
nodded back to him, but it was the nod of one who gathers up her
skirts as she throws alms to a beggar. Then Arnold realized that his
little fit of thoughtfulness had made a material difference to the
hum of conversation. He remembered his duty and leaned over toward
Lady Blennington.

"You promised to tell me more about some of these people," he
reminded her. "I am driven to make guesses all the time. Why does
Mr. Starling look so much like an unwilling and impatient guest? And
where is the castle of the Count Sabatini which has no roof?"

Lady Blennington sighed.

"This table is much too small for us to indulge in scandal," she
replied. "It really is such a pity. One so seldom meets any one
worth talking to who doesn't know everything there is that shouldn't
be known about everybody. About Count Sabatini, for instance, I
could tell you some most amusing things."

"His castle, perhaps, is in the air?" Arnold inquired.

"By no means," Lady Blennington assured him.

"On the contrary, it is very much upon the rocks. Some little island
near Minorca, I believe. They say that Mr. Weatherley was wrecked
there and Sabatini locked him up in a dungeon and refused to let him
go until he promised to marry his sister."

"There are a good many men in the world, I should think," Arnold
murmured, "who would like to be locked up on similar conditions."

She looked at him with a queer little smile.

"I suppose it is inevitable," she declared. "You will have to go