"Is there a better one? I'll use it if there is. You've arrived just in time. I am giving a little dinner to the consuls and their wives to-night, and you will add just the right touch; for we are all a little gray at the temples and some of us are a trifle bald. You see, I've an old friend from India in town to-day, and I've asked him, too. Your appearance evens up matters."
"Oh; then I'm just a filler-in!"
"Heavens, no! You're the most important person of the lot, though Colonel Knowlton …"
"Colonel Knowlton!" exclaimed Elsa.
"That's so, by George! Stupid of me. You came down on the same boat. Fine! You know each other."
Elsa straightened her lips with some difficulty. She possessed the enviable faculty of instantly forming in her mind pictures of coming events. The little swelling veins in the colonel's nose were as plain to her mind's eye as if he really stood before her. "Have him take me in to dinner," she suggested.
"Just what I was thinking of," declared the unsuspecting man. "If any one can draw out the colonel, it will be you."
"I'll do my best." Elsa's mind was full of rollicking malice.
Contemplatively he said: "So you've been doing the Orient alone? You are like your father in that way. He was never afraid of anything. Your mental make-up, too, I'll wager is like his. Finest man in the world."
"Wasn't he? How I wish he could have always been with me! We were such good comrades. They do say I am like father. But why is it, every one seems appalled that I should travel over here without male escort?"