the room's bare floor was laid together in a neat pattern of several
ordinary woods, the room had a prevalent air of surface bareness and much
scrubbing; and the little square of flowery carpet by the sofa, and the
velvet chimney-board with its capacious clock and vases of artificial
flowers, contended with that tone, as if, in bringing out the whole
effect, a Parisian had adapted a dairy to domestic purposes.

Mimic water was dropping off a mill-wheel under the clock. The visitor
had not stood before it, following it with his eyes, a minute, when M.
Obenreizer, at his elbow, startled him by saying, in very good English,
very slightly clipped: "How do you do? So glad!"

"I beg your pardon. I didn't hear you come in."

"Not at all! Sit, please."

Releasing his visitor's two arms, which he had lightly pinioned at the
elbows by way of embrace, M. Obenreizer also sat, remarking, with a
smile: "You are well? So glad!" and touching his elbows again.

"I don't know," said Vendale, after exchange of salutations, "whether you
may yet have heard of me from your House at Neuchatel?"

"Ah, yes!"

"In connection with Wilding and Co.?"

"Ah, surely!"

"Is it not odd that I should come to you, in London here, as one of the