“Why don’t I what?”

“Take your usual constitutional, over by the railings.  Opposite Schepstein’s.”

“That isn’t my usual constitutional, and you know it, Dominie,” said the Bonnie Lassie with dignity.

“Isn’t it?  Well, curiosity killed a cat, you know.”

“How shamelessly you garble!  It was—­”

“Never mind; the quotation is erroneous, anyway.  It should be:  suppressed curiosity killed a cat.”

The Bonnie Lassie sniffed.

“Rather than be dislodged from my precarious perch on this bench,” I pursued, “through the trembling imparted to it by your clinging to the back to restrain yourself from going to see what is up, I should almost prefer that you would go—­and peek.”

“Dominie,” said the Bonnie Lassie, “you are a despicable old man....  I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t stay long,” I pleaded.  “Pity the blind.”

Her golden laughter floated back to me.  But there was no mirth in her voice when she returned.

“It’s so dark in there I can hardly see.  But the big man is sitting on a pile of ribs talking to Plooie, and Annie Oombrella’s face is all swollen with crying.  I saw it in the window for a minute.”

Pro and con we argued what the probable event might be and how we could best meet it.  So intent upon our discussion did we become that we did not note the approach of a stranger until he was within a few paces of the bench.  With my crippled vision I apprehended him only as very tall and straight and wearing a loose cape.  The effect upon the Bonnie Lassie of his approach was surprising.  I heard her give a little gasp.  She got up from the bench.  Her hand fell upon my shoulder.  It was trembling.  Where, I wondered, had those two met and in what circumstances, that the mere sight of the stranger caused such emotion in the unusually self-controlled wife of Cyrus Staten.  The man spoke quickly in a deep and curiously melancholy voice: 

“Madame perhaps does me the honor to remember me?”

“I—­I—­I—­” began the Bonnie Lassie.

“The Comte de Tournon.  At Trouville we met, was it not?  Several years since?”

“Y-yes.  Certainly.  At Trouville.”

(Now I happen to know that the Bonnie Lassie has never been at Trouville, which did not assuage my suspicions.)

“You are friends of my—­countryman, Emile Garin, are you not?” he pursued in his phraseology of extreme precision, with only the faint echo of an accent.

“Who?” I said.  “Oh, Plooie, you mean.  Friends?  Well, acquaintances would be more accurate.”

“He tells me that you, Monsieur, befriended him when he had great need of friends.  And you, Madame, always.  So I have come to thank you.”

“You are interested in Plooie?” I asked.

“Plooie?” he repeated doubtfully.  I explained to him and he laughed gently.  “Profoundly interested,” he said.  “I have here one of his finest umbrellas which his good wife presented to me.  There was also a lady of whom he speaks, a grande dame, of very great authority.”  For all the sadness of the deep voice, I felt that his eyes were twinkling.