investments, or several deserving objects of Christian charity.  It is my business in life, as his brother-in-law and secretary, to decline with thanks the excellent investments, and to throw judicious cold water on the objects of charity.  Even I myself, as the great man’s almoner, am very much sought after.  People casually allude before me to artless stories of “poor curates in Cumberland, you know, Mr. Wentworth,” or widows in Cornwall, penniless poets with epics in their desks, and young painters who need but the breath of a patron to open to them the doors of an admiring Academy.  I smile and look wise, while I administer cold water in minute doses; but I never report one of these cases to Sir Charles, except in the rare or almost unheard-of event where I think there is really something in them.

Ever since our little adventure with the Seer at Nice, Sir Charles, who is constitutionally cautious, had been even more careful than usual about possible sharpers.  And, as chance would have it, there sat just opposite us at table d’hôte at the Schweitzerhof—­’tis a fad of Amelia’s to dine at table d’hôte; she says she can’t bear to be boxed up all day in private rooms with “too much family”—­a sinister-looking man with dark hair and eyes, conspicuous by his bushy overhanging eyebrows.  My attention was first called to the eyebrows in question by a nice little parson who sat at our side, and who observed that they were made up of certain large and bristly hairs, which (he told us) had been traced by Darwin to our monkey ancestors.  Very pleasant little fellow, this fresh-faced young parson, on his honeymoon tour with a nice wee wife, a bonnie Scotch lassie with a charming accent.

I looked at the eyebrows close.  Then a sudden thought struck me.  “Do you believe they’re his own?” I asked of the curate; “or are they only stuck on—­a make-up disguise?  They really almost look like it.”

“You don’t suppose—­” Charles began, and checked himself suddenly.

“Yes, I do,” I answered; “the Seer!” Then I recollected my blunder, and looked down sheepishly.  For, to say the truth, Vandrift had straightly enjoined on me long before to say nothing of our painful little episode at Nice to Amelia; he was afraid if she once heard of it, he would hear of it for ever after.

“What Seer?” the little parson inquired, with parsonical curiosity.

I noticed the man with the overhanging eyebrows give a queer sort of start.  Charles’s glance was fixed upon me.  I hardly knew what to answer.

“Oh, a man who was at Nice with us last year,” I stammered out, trying hard to look unconcerned.  “A fellow they talked about, that’s all.”  And I turned the subject.

But the curate, like a donkey, wouldn’t let me turn it.

“Had he eyebrows like that?” he inquired, in an undertone.  I was really angry.  If this was Colonel Clay, the curate was obviously giving him the cue, and making it much more difficult for us to catch him, now we might possibly have lighted on the chance of doing so.