fashionable restaurant. Nevertheless, they received prompt and
almost ofcious service. Tavernake, as he watched his companion's
air, her manner of seating herself and accepting the attentions
of the head waiter, felt that nameless impulse which was
responsible for his having followed her from Blenheim House and
which he could only call curiosity, becoming stronger. An
exceedingly matter-of-fact person, he was also by instinct and
habit observant. He never doubted but that she belonged to a
class of society from which the guests at the boarding-house
where they had both lived were seldom recruited, and of which he
himself knew little. He was not in the least a snob, this young
man, but he found the fact interesting. Life with him was
already very much the same as a ledger account--a matter of
debits and credits, and he had never failed to include among the
latter that curious gift of breeding for which he himself, denied
it by heritage, had somehow substituted a complete and
exceedingly rare naturalness.

"I should like," she announced, laying down the carte, "a fried
sole, some cutlets, an ice, and black coffee."

The waiter bowed.

"And for Monsieur?"

Tavernake glanced at his watch; it was already ten o'clock.

"I will take the same," he declared.

"And to drink?"