"Mr. Dainopoulos, I'm no saint, y'understand, but all the same—well, a man wants something, y'understand? Besides," added Mr. Spokesly, "'twixt you an' me an' the stern-post, I'm engaged."
"You don't tell me!" exclaimed Mr. Dainopoulos in that peculiarly gratifying fashion which seemed to imply that this was the first betrothal announced since the Fall of Constantinople. "You don't tell—and I bet you what you like she's English, eh?"
"Yes, she's English all right," said Mr. Spokesly, feeling somewhat embarrassed by his friend's triumphant cordiality. "Pretty safe bet, that," he added as the carriage stopped in front of a black, solid wooden gate in a high yellow wall.
"Safe enough?" laughed Mr. Dainopoulos, not quite seizing the point intended. "Why, sure! Englishwomen are the best of all. I ought to know. Ha-ha!" and he slapped Mr. Spokesly's knee while his other hand sought the price of the ride. Mr. Spokesly failed to appreciate this approval of Englishwomen. A suspicion shot through his mind. He looked at the dark gate in the yellow wall. What, precisely, did this man mean by that last remark? Was all this talk of family and so forth a blind? Was he, Mr. Spokesly, on the brink of an adventure? It must be confessed that he would not have objected to that; but his gorge rose in spite of him at the reference to Englishwomen.
"I don't quite understand," he remarked in a low tone. "How do you happen to know so much about 'em?"
Mr. Dainopoulos laughed again and handed the fare to the driver. He stepped out, held a bunch of keys to the light of the carriage lamp, and selected one. Then he beckoned to Mr. Spokesly to alight.
"I'll tell you, Mister," he said, as he stooped, inserted the key, turned it, and pushed open the gate. "Because I married one myself."
CHAPTER V
Mr. Spokesly, in a state of considerable astonishment, sat by a balconied upper window and tried to get his recent experiences into some sort of focus. That last remark of Mr. Dainopoulos, that he had married one himself, had dislocated his guest's faculties, so that Mr. Spokesly was unable to note clearly by what means he had arrived at his present position, a balconied window on his right and in front of him a woman lying on a sofa. A woman whose brown hair, extraordinarily long and fine, was a glossy pile pressed into the pillow, and whose thin hand he had just relinquished.