thinking how much more thoroughly he looked the polished man of the world than the other men.  Kildare never appeared to greater advantage than in the uniform and trappings of his profession.  In a black coat and a white tie he looked like any other handsome young Englishman, utterly without individuality.  But Isaacs, with his pale complexion and delicate high-bred features, bore himself like a noble of the old school.  Westonhaugh beside him looked washed-out and deathly, Kildare was too coarsely healthy, and Ghyrkins and I, representing different types of extreme plainness, served as foils to all three.

I watched Miss Westonhaugh while Isaacs was speaking.  She had evidently heard the whole story, for her expression showed beforehand the emotion she expected to feel at each point.  Her colour came and went softly, and her eyes brightened with a warm light beneath the dark brows that contrasted so strangely yet delightfully with the mass of flaxen-white hair.  She wore something dark and soft, cut square at the neck, and a plain circlet of gold was her only ornament.  She was a beautiful creature, certainly; one of those striking-looking women of whom something is always expected, until they drop quietly out of youth into middle age, and the world finds out that they are, after all, not heroines of romance, but merely plain, honest, good women; good wives and good mothers who love their homes and husbands well, though it has pleased nature in some strange freak to give them the form and feature of a Semiramis, a Cleopatra, or a Jeanne d’Arc.

“Dear me, how very interesting!” exclaimed Mr. Ghyrkins, looking up from his hill mutton as Isaacs finished, and a little murmur of sympathetic applause went round the table.

“I would give a great deal to have been through all that,” said Lord Steepleton, slowly proceeding to sip a glass of claret.

“Just think!” ejaculated John Westonhaugh.  “And I was entertaining such a Sinbad unawares!” and he took another green pepper from the dish his servant handed him.

“Upon my word, Isaacs,” I said, “some one ought to make a novel of that story; it would sell like wildfire.”

“Why don’t you do it yourself, Griggs?” he asked.  “You are a pressman, and I am sure you are welcome to the whole thing.”

“I will,” I answered.

“Oh do, Mr. Griggs,” said the young lady, “and make it wind up with a tiger-hunt.  You could lay the scene in Australia or the Barbadoes, or some of those places, and put us all in—­and kill us all off, if you like, you know.  It would be such fun.”  Poor Miss Westonhaugh!

“It is easy to see what you are thinking about most, Miss Westonhaugh,” said Lord Steepleton:  “the tigers are uppermost in your mind; and therefore in mine also,” he added gallantly.

“Indeed, no—­I was thinking about Mr. Isaacs.”  She blushed scarlet—­the first time I had ever seen her really embarrassed.  It was very natural that she should be thinking of Isaacs and the strange adventures he had just recounted; and if she had not cared about him she would not have changed colour.  So I thought, at all events.