CHAPTER II

INTRODUCES ONE OF STROOD'S SUCCESSORS


But though Gabriel Strood occupied no seat in that train, one of his
successors was traveling by it to Chamonix after an absence of four
years. Of those four years Captain Chayne had passed the last two among
the coal-stacks of Aden, with the yellow land of Arabia at his back,
longing each day for this particular morning, and keeping his body lithe
and strong against its coming. He left the train at Annemasse, and
crossing the rails to the buffet, sat down at the table next to that
which Mrs. Thesiger and her daughter already occupied.

He glanced at them, placed them in their category, and looked away,
utterly uninterested. They belonged to the great class of the continental
wanderers, people of whom little is known and everything
suspected--people with no kinsfolk, who flit from hotel to hotel and
gather about them for a season the knowing middle-aged men and the
ignorant young ones, and perhaps here and there an unwary woman deceived
by the more than fashionable cut of their clothes. The mother he put down
as nearer forty than thirty, and engaged in a struggle against odds to
look nearer twenty than thirty. The daughter's face Chayne could not see,
for it was bent persistently over a book. But he thought of a big doll in
a Christmas toy-shop. From her delicate bronze shoes to her large hat of
mauve tulle everything that she wore was unsuitable. The frock with its