“I fancy,” he said, “that I was a fairly average person—I mean that I was possessed of an average share of the humanities. I have only my memory to go by. I am one of those fortunate persons, you see, who have realized an actual reincarnation. I have the advantage of having looked out upon life from two different sets of windows.—By the bye, Aynesworth, have you noticed that unwholesome-looking youth in a serge suit there?”
Aynesworth nodded.
“What about him?”
“I fancy that he must know—my history. He sits all day long smoking bad cigarettes and watching me. He makes clumsy attempts to enter into conversation with me. He is interested in us for some reason or other.”
Aynesworth nodded.
“Shocking young bounder,” he remarked. “I’ve noticed him myself.”
“Talk to him some time, and find out what he means by it,” Wingrave said. “I don’t want to find my biography in the American newspapers. It might interfere with my operations there. Here’s this woman coming to worry us! You take her off, Aynesworth! I shall go into the smoking room.”
But Mrs. Travers was not so easily to be disposed of. For some reason or other, she had shown a disposition to attach herself to Wingrave.
“Please put me in my chair,” she said to him, holding out her rug and cushion. “No! Not you, Mr. Aynesworth. Mr. Wingrave understands so much better how to wrap me up. Thanks! Won’t you sit down yourself? It’s much better for you out here than in the smoking room—and we might go on with our argument.”
“I thought,” Wingrave remarked, accepting her invitation after a moment’s hesitation, “that we were to abandon it.”