laughed, but forgivingly. "I'm immensely obliged. You deserve," she
continued to me, "that I should say the gentleman's own face is the
image of a certain other gentleman's."

"It isn't the image of yours," Obert said to me, fitting the cap, "but
it's a funny thing that it should really recall to one some face among
us here, on this occasion--I mean some face in our party--that I can't
think of." We had our eyes again on the ominous figure. "We've seen him
yesterday--we've seen him already this morning." Obert, oddly enough,
still couldn't catch it. "Who the deuce is it?"

"I know," I returned after a moment--our friend's reference having
again, in a flash, become illuminating. "But nothing would induce me to
tell."

"If _I_ were the flattered individual," Long observed, speaking for the
first time, "I've an idea that you'd give me the benefit of the
compliment. Therefore it's probably not me."

"Oh, it's not you in the least," Mrs. Server blandly took upon herself
to observe. "This face is so bad----"

"And mine is so good?" our companion laughed. "Thank you for saving me!"

I watched them look at each other, for there had been as yet between
them no complete exchange. Yes, they were natural. I couldn't have made
it out that they were not. But there was something, all the same, that
I wanted to know, and I put it immediately to Long. "Why do you bring
against me such an accusation?"

He met the question--singularly enough--as if his readiness had suddenly
deserted him. "I don't know!"--and he turned off to another picture.

It left the three of us all the more confronted with the conundrum
launched by Obert, and Mrs. Server's curiosity remained. "_Do_ name,"
she said to me, "the flattered individual."

"No, it's a responsibility I leave to Obert."

But he was clearly still at fault; he was like a man desiring, but
unable, to sneeze. "I see the fellow--yet I don't. Never mind." He
turned away too. "He'll come to me."

"The resemblance," said Long, on this, at a distance from us and not
turning, "the resemblance, which I shouldn't think would puzzle anyone,
is simply to 'poor Briss'!"

"Oh, of course!"--and Obert gave a jump round.

"Ah--I do see it," Mrs. Server conceded with her head on one side, but
as if speaking rather for harmony.

I didn't believe she saw it, but that only made her the more natural;
which was also the air she had on going to join Long, in his new
contemplation, after I had admitte