d that it was of Brissenden I myself
had thought. Obert and I remained together in the presence of the Man
with the Mask, and, the others being out of earshot, he reminded me that
I had promised him the night before in the smoking-room to give him
to-day the knowledge I had then withheld. If I had announced that I was
on the track of a discovery, pray had I made it yet, and what was it, at
any rate, that I proposed to discover? I felt now, in truth, more
uncomfortable than I had expected in being kept to my obligation, and I
beat about the bush a little till, instead of meeting it, I was able to
put the natural question: "What wonderful things was Long just saying to
you?"

"Oh, characteristic ones enough--whimsical, fanciful, funny. The things
he says, you know."

It was indeed a fresh view. "They strike you as characteristic?"

"Of the man himself and his type of mind? Surely. Don't _you_? He talks
to talk, but he's really amusing."

I was watching our companions. "Indeed he is--extraordinarily amusing."
It was highly interesting to me to hear at last of Long's "type of
mind." "See how amusing he is at the present moment to Mrs. Server."

Obert took this in; she was convulsed, in the extravagance always so
pretty as to be pardonable, with laughter, and she even looked over at
us as if to intimate with her shining, lingering eyes that we wouldn't
be surprised at her transports if we suspected what her entertainer,
whom she had never known for such a humourist, was saying. Instead of
going to find out, all the same, we remained another minute together. It
was for me, now, I could see, that Obert had his best attention. "What's
the matter with them?"

It startled me almost as much as if he had asked me what was the matter
with myself--for that something _was_, under this head, I was by this
time unable to ignore. Not twenty minutes had elapsed since our meeting
with Mrs. Server on the terrace had determined Grace Brissenden's
elation, but it was a fact that my nervousness had taken an
extraordinary stride. I had perhaps not till this instant been fully
aware of it--it was really brought out by the way Obert looked at me as
if he fancied he had heard me shake. Mrs. Server might be natural, and
Gilbert Long might be, but I should not preserve that calm unless I
pulled myself well together. I made the effort, facing my sharp
interlocutor; and I think it was at this point that I fully measured my
dismay. I had grown--