window and looked out attentively at nothing before he went on:
"It won't be very long, and I don't suppose it will ever happen
again. The other man is to meet them in Rome. He's a countryman
of yours, and I believe--I believe it's--about--settled!"

He pronounced these last words in an even voice, but how slowly!
Not more slowly than the construction of my own response, which
I heard myself making:

"This countryman of mine--who is he?"

"One of your kind of Kentucky Colonels," Poor Jr. laughed
mournfully. At first I did not understand; then it came to me
that he had sometimes previously spoken in that idiom of the
nobles, and that it had been his custom to address one of his
Parisian followers, a vicomte, as "Colonel."

"What is his name?"

"I can't pronounce it, and I don't know how to spell it," he
answered. "And that doesn't bring me to the verge of the grave!
I can bear to forget it, at least until we get to Naples!"

He turned and went to the door, saying, cheerfully: "Well, old
horse-thief" (such had come to be his name for me sometimes, and
it was pleasant to hear), "we must be dressing. They're at this
hotel, and we dine with them to-night."