As the stranger sat at right-angles to the wall, with an old-world air of distinction and outworn romance, Carlotta quite forgot the heat, her blistered feet, and all her troubles, in speculating about his mystery.
"He's had a past—by heck—he's had a past! Lost all his fortune at cards. Old Duke Guy disinherits him. Lady Leonore weeps oodles, then hitches to the old Marky with the gout and his ropes of poils. There you have it, and now he roams and roams the world, singin' 'Farewell for ever me own troo luv?' But he's got nerve enough behind—if somebody'd only jar him out of his pipe-dreams."
She was probably only half-wrong in her rough reading, for the lighted match which he held to his cigarette now revealed the face, turned three-quarters towards them, with its olive hue of South-eastern France and its almost feminine grace of contour. In the light of a later match, quite as in Queer Hat's Studio, one was relieved to note that this delicacy of feature was saved by the courageous mouth and firm foundation of the jaw. Perhaps a more expert physiognomist than Carlotta would have said that the inherited melancholy of a line doomed to a century's continued misfortunes had in him darkened to a sombre fatalism—possibly with a final and crushing catastrophe. Had he in addition to his discernment possessed a strain of the romantic, he might have added that never had the sword of this spirit actually rusted. It was only sheathed in the sadness of those dark eyes, and could flash forth right royally if the occasion came.
The final flicker of the match fell on an object of greater
