better than I, though without some knowledge of the North-
American idiom which my travels with Poor Jr. had given me. He
was one of those splendid egoists who seem to talk in modesty,
to keep themselves behind scenes, yet who, when the curtain
falls, are discovered to be the heroes, after all, though shown
in so delicate a fashion that the audience flatters itself in
the discovery.

And how practical was this fellow, how many years he had been
developing his fascinations! I was the only person of that small
company who could have a suspicion that his moustache was dyed,
that his hair was toupee, or that hints of his real age were
scorpions and adders to him. I should not have thought it, if I
had not known it. Here was my advantage: I had known his
monstrous vanity all my life.

So he talked of himself in his various surreptitious ways until
coffee came, Miss Landry listening eagerly, and my poor friend
making no effort; for what were his quiet United States
absurdities compared to the whole-world gaieties and Abyssinian
adventures of this Othello, particularly for a young girl to
whom Antonio's type was unfamiliar? For the first time I saw my
young man's brave front desert him. His mouth drooped, and his
eyes had an appearance of having gazed long at a bright light. I
saw that he, unhappy one, was at last too sure what her answer
would be.

For myself, I said very little--I waited. I hoped and believed
Antonio would attack me in his clever, disguised way, for he had
always hated me and my dead brother, and he had never failed to