up and down the lake in a tiny
skiff which had been set apart for his service. In the evening came
dinner and conversation with his host, with perhaps a game or two of
billiards to finish up the day.

Captain Ducie found no scope for the exercise of his gambling
proclivities at Bon Repos. Platzoff never touched card or dice. He
could handle a cue tolerably well, but beyond a half-crown game, Ducie
giving him ten points out of fifty, he could never be persuaded to
venture. If the Captain, when he went down to Bon Repos, had any
expectation of replenishing his pockets by means of faro and unlimited
loo, he was wretchedly mistaken. But whatever secret annoyance he might
feel, he was too much a man of the world to allow his host even to
suspect its existence.

Of society in the ordinary meaning of that word there was absolutely
none at Bon Repos. None of the neighbouring families by any chance ever
called on Platzoff. By no chance did Platzoff ever call on any of the
neighbouring families.

"They are too good for me, too orthodox, too strait-laced," exclaimed
the Russian one day in his quiet, jeering way. "Or it may be that I am
not good enough for them. Any way, we do not coalesce. Rather are we
like flint and steel, and eliminate a spark whenever we come in contact.
They look upon me as a pagan, and hold me in horror. I look upon
three-fourths of them as Pharisees, and hold them in contempt. Good
people there are among them no doubt; people whom it would be a pleasure
to know, but I have neither time, health, nor inclination for
conventional English visiting--for your ponderous style of hospitality.
I am quite sure that my ideas of men and manners would not coincide with
those of the quiet country ladies and gentlemen of these parts; while
theirs would seem to me terribly wearisome and jejune. Therefore, as I
take it, we are better apart."

By and by Ducie discovered that his host was not so entirely isolated
from the world as at first sight he appeared to be.

Occasional society there was of a certain kind, intermittent, coming and
going like birds of passage. One, or sometimes two visitors, of whose
arrival Ducie had heard no previous mention, would now and again put in
an appearance at the dinner-table, would pass one, or at the most two
nights at Bon Repos, and would then be seen no more, having gone as
mysteriously as they had come.

These visitors were always foreigners, now of one nationality, now of
anoth