left the table, and I did not see her again for a fortnight. On
week-days she did not return to the house for lunch, my only meal at
Mrs. Apperthwaite's (I dined at a restaurant near the "Despatch"
office), and she was out of town for a little visit, her mother informed
us, over the following Saturday and Sunday. She was not altogether out
of my thoughts, however--indeed, she almost divided them with the
Honorable David Beasley.

A better view which I was afforded of this gentleman did not lessen my
interest in him; increased it rather; it also served to make the
extraordinary didoes of which he had been the virtuoso and I the
audience more than ever profoundly inexplicable. My glimpse of him in
the lighted doorway had given me the vaguest impression of his
appearance, but one afternoon--a few days after my interview with Miss
Apperthwaite--I was starting for the office and met him full-face-on as
he was turning in at his gate. I took as careful invoice of him as I
could without conspicuously glaring.

There was something remarkably "taking," as we say, about this
man--something easy and genial and quizzical and careless. He was the
kind of person you LIKE to meet on the street; whose cheerful passing
sends you on feeling indefinably a little gayer than you did. He was
tall, thin--even gaunt, perhaps--and his face was long, rather pale, and
shrewd and gentle; something in its oddity not unremindful of the late
Sol Smith Russell. His hat was tilted back a little, the slightest bit
to one side, and the sparse, brownish hair above his high forehead was
going to be gray before long. He looked about forty.

The truth is, I had expected to see a cousin german to Don Quixote; I
had thought to detect signs and gleams of wildness, however