I heartily endorsed those words of Dawson's. Old Groome—as Phil Dawson rather irreverently called him—had done not a little to make my stay with Phil, in his bachelor quarters, the pleasantest visit I had ever paid anywhere to anyone. It is, perhaps, immaterial to mention that a Miss Groome—Miss Nora Groome, the second daughter—had had something to do with so desirable a consummation. But it was at least a comfort to know that she had so satisfactory a father. No, not in any sense a genius. A little stolid. A little heavy in hand, perhaps. Even curiously simple on a certain side of him; yet, for all that, as Phil had said, a homely, honest, hearty, hospitable country gentleman. And so extremely friendly, too, to a forlorn young bachelor, who still—and very much still—had his way to make, and all the world in front of him to make it in.
Then, all the rest of the way to town, I thought of Nora.
Four or five nights after my return to my own quarters I dropped into a conversazione at the Apollo. The place was crowded. A conversazione at the Apollo Club means music. You generally hear somebody new who is worth hearing or who wishes the world to think that he or she is worth hearing. That night, however, there was not anyone particularly striking. The whole affair to me seemed dull. Perhaps that was to some extent because Gwendolen Martini—as she calls herself—fastened herself on to me like a burr, and, mentally, I was instituting unfavourable comparisons between her and someone else who was not there—which was,
