and most remarkable mysteries of modern times."

"What does the mystery concern?" I asked, in breathless eagerness.

"It concerns a woman."

CHAPTER III

THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"

The Mediterranean Squadron, that magnificent display of naval force that
is the guarantee of peace in Europe, after a week of gay festivities in
Leghorn, had sailed for Gaeta, while I, glad to escape from the glaring
heat, found myself back once more in dear old London.

One passes one's time in the south well enough in winter, but after a
year even the most ardent lover of Italy longs to return to his own
people, be it ever for so brief a space. Exile for a whole year in any
continental town is exile indeed; therefore, although I lived in Italy
for choice, I, like so many other Englishmen, always managed to spend a
month or two in summer in our temperate if much maligned climate.

London, the same dear, dusty old London, only perhaps more dear and more
dusty than ever, was my native city; hence I always spent a few weeks in
it, even though all the world might be absent in the country, or at the
seaside.

I had idled away a pleasant month up in Buxton, and from there had gone
north to the Lakes, and it was one hot evening in mid-August that I
found myself again in London, crossing St. James's Square from the
Sports Club, where I had dined, walking towards Pall Mall. Darkness had
just fallen, and there was that stifling oppression in the air that
fore-tokened a thunderstorm. The club was not gay with life and
merriment as it is in the season, for everyone was away, many of the
rooms were closed for re-decoration, and most of the furniture swathed
in linen.

I was on my way to pay a visit to a lady who lived up at Hampstead, a
friend of my late mother's, and had just turned into Pall Mall, when a
voice at my elbow suddenly exclaimed in Italian--

"Ah, signore!--why, actually, my padrone!"

And looking round, I saw a thin-faced man of about thirty, dressed in
neat but rather shabby black, whom I instantly recognized as a man who
had been my servant in Leghorn for two years, after which he had left to
better himself.

"Why, Olinto!" I exclaimed, surprised, as I halted. "You--in London--eh?
Well, and how are you getting on?"

"Most excellently, signore," he answered in broken English, smiling.
"But it is so pleasant for me to see my generous padrone again. What
fortune it is that I should pass here at this very moment!"