“You frighten him! Why should you?”
“I don’t know why. If he happens to be here when I come in, he gets up and goes away. Did you never notice it? It is the same at Mrs. Knox’s. It was the same once at Mrs. Hampshire’s.”
Madame laughed. “Perhaps he is shy,” said she, jestingly.
“A man who has travelled to India and back must have rubbed his shyness off, one would think. I wish I knew where I had met him before!—if I have met him. Every now and again his face seems to strike on a chord of my memory.”
“It is a handsome face,” remarked madame.
“Pretty well. As much as can be seen of it. He has hair enough for a Russian bear or a wild Indian.”
“Have wild Indians a superabundance of hair?” asked she gravely.
I laughed. “Seriously speaking, though, Madame St. Vincent, I think I must have met him somewhere.”
“Seriously speaking, I don’t think that can be,” she answered; and her jesting tone had become serious. “I believe he has passed nearly all his life in India.”
“Just as you have passed yours in the South of France. And yet there is something in your face also familiar to me.”