“I am afraid that you are not amusing yourself,” she remarked, with some faint yet kindly note of condescension in her tone.

“You are very kind,” he answered, his eyebrows slightly lifted.  “I certainly am not.  But then I did not come here to amuse myself.”

“Indeed?  A sense of duty brought you, perhaps?”

“A sense of duty, beyond a doubt,” the man assented politely.

She felt like passing on—­but she also felt like staying, so she stayed.

“Cannot I help you towards the further accomplishment of your duty, then?” she enquired.

He looked at her and the grim severity of his face was lightened by a smile.

“You could help me more easily to forget it,” he replied.

She opened her lips, hesitated and closed them again.  Already she had recognised the fact that this was not a man to be snubbed.  Neither had she, notwithstanding her momentary irritation, any real desire to do so.

“You do not know many people here?”

“I know no one,” he confessed.

“I am Elisabeth Landon,” she told him.  “Mr. Foley is my uncle.  My mother and I live with him and always help him to entertain.”

“Hence your interest in a lonely stranger,” he remarked.  “Please have no qualms about me.  I am always interested when I am permitted to watch my fellow creatures, especially when the types are novel to me.”

She looked at him searchingly for a moment.  As yet she had not succeeded in placing him.  His features were large but well-shaped, his cheek-bones a little high, his forehead massive, his deep-set eyes bright and marvellously penetrating.  He had a mouth long and firm, with a slightly humorous twist at the corners.  His hair was black and plentiful.  He might have been of any age between thirty-five and forty.  His limbs and body were powerful; his head was set with the poise of an emperor.  His clothes were correct and well worn, he was entirely at his ease.  Yet Elisabeth, who was an observant person, looked at him and wondered.  He would have been more at home, she thought, out in the storms of life than in her uncle’s drawing-rooms.  Yet what was he?  He lacked the trimness of the soldier; of the debonair smartness of the modern fighting man there was no trace whatsoever in his speech or appearance.  The politicians who were likely to be present she knew.  What was there left?  An explorer, perhaps, or a colonial.  Her curiosity became imperious.

“You have not told me your name,” she reminded him.

“My name is Maraton,” he replied, a little grimly.

“You—­Maraton!”

There was a brief silence—­not without a certain dramatic significance to the girl who stood there with slightly parted lips.  The smooth serenity of her forehead was broken by a frown; her beautiful blue eyes were troubled.  She seemed somehow to have dilated, to have drawn herself up.  Her air of politeness, half gracious, half condescending, had vanished.  It was as though in spirit she were preparing for battle.