scene of his late experiences. Already they had faded from his memory
with the departure of his compatriots from St. Kentigern. He was smoking
by the fire in the billiard-room late one night when a fellow-guest
approached him.

"Saw you didn't remember me at dinner."

The voice was hesitating, pleasant, and not quite unfamiliar. The
consul looked up, and identified the figure before him as one of the new
arrivals that day, whom, in the informal and easy courtesy of the
house, he had met with no further introduction than a vague smile. He
remembered, too, that the stranger had glanced at him once or twice at
dinner, with shy but engaging reserve.

"You must see such a lot of people, and the way things are arranged
and settled here everybody expects to look and act like everybody
else, don't you know, so you can't tell one chap from another. Deuced
annoying, eh? That's where you Americans are different, and that's
why those countrywomen of yours were so charming, don't you know, so
original. We were all together on the top of a coach in Scotland, don't
you remember? Had such a jolly time in the beastly rain. You didn't
catch my name. It's Duncaster."

The consul at once recalled his former fellow-traveler. The two men
shook hands. The Englishman took a pipe from his smoking-jacket, and
drew a chair beside the consul.

"Yes," he continued, comfortably filling his pipe, "the daughter,
Miss Kirkby, was awfully good fun; so fresh, so perfectly natural and
innocent, don't you know, and yet so extraordinarily sharp and clever.