acquaintance, was here the centre of the situation, grasping the
identities of all these strangers with wonderful quickness, flitting
about from one to another, making friends with them all, and
constraining Philip to do the same. Anderson followed her closely,
evidently feeling a responsibility for the party only second to her own.

He found time, however, to whisper to Mariette, as they were all about
to mount the car:

"Eh bien?"

"Mais oui--très gracieuse!" said the other, but without a smile, and
with a shrug of the shoulders. _He_ was only there to please Anderson.
What did the aristocratic Englishwoman on tour--with all her little
Jingoisms and Imperialisms about her--matter to him, or he to her?

While the stream of guests was slowly making its way into the car, while
Yerkes at the further end, resplendent in a buttonhole and a white cap
and apron, was watching the scene, and the special engine, like an
impatient horse, was puffing and hissing to be off, a man, who had
entered the cloak-room of the station to deposit a bundle just as the
car-party arrived, approached the cloak-room door from the inside, and
looked through the glazed upper half. His stealthy movements and his
strange appearance passed unnoticed. There was a noisy emigrant party in
the cloak-room, taking out luggage deposited the night before; they were
absorbed in their own affairs, and in some wrangle with the officials
which involved a good deal of lost temper on both sides.

The man was old and grey. His face, large-featured and originally comely
in outline, wore the unmistakable look of the outcast. His eyes were