Henry, having left the Assembly, sent off his message to his newspaper (it was entirely about the disappearance of Dr. Svensen), glanced into his pigeon-hole on his way out, and found there, among various superfluous documents, a note addressed to him by the ex-cardinal Franchi, suggesting that, if he should not find himself better employed, he should give the writer his company at dinner at eight o'clock that evening, at his villa at Monet, two miles up the lake. He would find a small electric launch waiting for him at seven-thirty at the Eaux-Vives jetty, in which would be Dr. Franchi's niece, who had been attending the Assembly that afternoon.

“Excellent,” thought Henry. “I will go.” For he was greatly attracted by Dr. Franchi, and liked also to dine out, and to have a trip up to Monet in a motor launch.

He went back to his indigent rooms in the AllÉe Petit Chat, and washed and dressed. (Fortunately, he had at no time a heavy beard, so did not have to shave in the evenings.) Well-dressed he was not, even in his evening clothes, which were a cast-off of his brother's, and not, as evening clothes should be, faultless; but still they passed, and Henry always looked rather nice.

“Not a bad face,” he reflected, surveying it in the dusty speckled glass. “A trifle weak perhaps. I am a trifle weak; that is so. But, on the whole, the face of a gentleman and a decent fellow. And not devoid of intelligence.... Interesting, to see one's own face. Especially in this odd glass. Now I must be off. Hat, stick, overcoat, scarf—that is everything.”

He walked down to the Eaux-Vives jetty, where a smart electric launch did indeed await him, and in it a young lady of handsome appearance, who regarded him with friendly interest and said, in pronounced American with an Italian accent, “I'm real pleased to meet you, Mr. Beechtree. Step right in. We'll start at once.”

Henry stepped right in, and sat down by this prepossessing girl.

“I must introduce myself,” she said. “My name is Gina Longfellow, and I'm Dr. Franchi's niece.”

“What excellent English you talk,” said Henry politely.

“American,” she corrected him. “My father was a native of Joliet, Ill. Are you acquainted with the Middle West?”

“I've travelled there,” said Henry, and repressed a shudder, for he had found the Middle West deplorable. He preferred South America.

“I am related to the poet,” said Miss Longfellow. “That great poet who wrote Hiawatha, Evangeline, and The Psalm of Life. Possibly you came across him out in the States?”

“No,” said Henry. “I fancy he was even then dead. You are a descendant of his?”

“A descendant—yes. I remember now; he died, poor nonno.... The lake pleases you, Mr. Beechtree?”

“Indeed, yes. It is very beautiful.”

Miss Longfellow's fine dark eyes had a momentary flicker of resentment. Most young men looked at her, but Mr. Beechtree at the lake, with his melancholy brooding eyes. Henry liked handsome young women well enough, but he admired scenery more. The smooth shimmer of the twilight waters, still holding the flash of sunset, the twinkling city of lights they were swiftly leaving behind them at the lake's head, the smaller constellations of the lakeside villages on either hand—these made on Henry, whose Æsthetic nerve was sensitive, an unsteadying impression.

Miss Longfellow recalled his attention.

“Do you think the League will last?” she inquired sharply. “Do you like Geneva? Do you think the League will be moved somewhere else? Isn't it a real pity the French are so obstructionist? Will the Americans come in?”

Henry adjusted his monocle and looked at her in some surprise.

“Well,” she said impatiently, “I guess you're used to those questions by now.”

“But you've left out the latest,” Henry said. “What do you think can have happened to Svensen?”

“Ah, there you have us all guessing,” she amiably returned. “Poor Svensen. Who'd have thought it of him?”

“Thought what?”

“Why, this. He always seemed such a white man. My, isn't it queer what people will do?”

Henry, who had been brought up on Dr. Svensen's narrations of his Arctic explorations, and greatly revered him, said, “But I don't believe he's done anything.”

“Not done a get-away, you mean? Well now, why should he, after all? Perhaps he fell right into this deep lake after dining, and couldn't get out, poveretto. Yet he was a real fine swimmer they say.”

“Most improbable,” said Henry, who had dismissed that hypothesis already. He leant forward and spoke discreetly. “I fancy, Miss Longfellow, there are those in Geneva who could throw some light on this affair if they chose.”

“You don't say! Dio mio! Now isn't that quite a notion!” Miss Longfellow was interested. “Why, Mr. Beechtree, you don't suspect foul play, do you?”

Henry nodded.

“I suppose I rather easily suspect foul play,” he candidly admitted. “It's more interesting, and I'm a journalist. But in this case there are reasons——”

“Now isn't this too terribly exciting! Reasons! Just you tell me all you know, Mr. Beechtree, if it's not indiscreet. Non son' giornalista, io!”

“I don't know anything. Except that there are people who might be glad to get Svensen out of the way.”

“But who are they? I thought every one respected him ever so!”

“Respect is akin to fear,” said Henry.

On that dictum, the launch took a swift turn to the right, and dashed towards a jetty which bore on a board above it the words, “ChÂteau LÉman. Defense.”

“A private jetty,” said Henry.

“Yes. The village jetty is beyond. This is my uncle's. That path only leads up to the ChÂteau.”

They disembarked, and climbed up a steep path which led through a wrought iron gate into a walled garden that ran down to the lake's edge. Henry, who was romantic, said, “How very delightful. How old is the ChÂteau?”

“Chi sa? Real old, I can tell you. Ask Uncle Silvio. He's great on history. He's for ever writing historical books. History and heresy—Dio mio! That is why they turned him out of the Church, you know.”

“So I heard.... Are you a Catholic, Miss Longfellow?”

She gave a little shrug.

“I was brought up Catholic. Women believe what they are taught, as a rule, don't they?”

“I hadn't observed it,” Henry said, “particularly. Are women so unlike men then?”

“That's quite a question, isn't it. What do you think?”

“I can't think in large sections and masses of people,” Henry replied. “Women are so different one from another. So are men. That's all I can see, when people talk of the sexes.”

“MacchÈ! You don't say!” said Miss Longfellow, looking at him inquiringly. “Most people always think in large masses of people. They find it easier, more convenient, more picturesque.”

“It is indeed so,” Henry admitted. “But less accurate. Accuracy—do you agree with me?—is of an importance very greatly underestimated by the majority of persons.”

“I guess,” said Miss Longfellow, not interested, “you're quite a clever young man.”

Henry replied truthfully, “Indeed, no,” and at this point they turned a bend in the path and the chÂteau was before them in the evening light; an arcaded, balconied, white-washed building, vine-covered and red-roofed, with queer outside staircases and green-shuttered windows, many of which were lit. Certainly old, though restored. A little way from it was a small belfried chapel.

“Charming,” said Henry, removing his eyeglass the better to look. “Amazingly charming.”

A big door stood open and through this they passed into a hall lit by large hanging lamps and full of dogs, or so it seemed to Henry, for on all sides they rose to stare at him, to sniff at his ankles, for the most part with the air of distaste commonly adopted towards Henry by these friends of man.

“You're not a dog lover?” Miss Longfellow suggested, and Henry again replied that he could not like or dislike his fellows in large sections; some dogs he liked, others not, as with men, women, and children.

“But I guess they don't like you very much,” she returned, shrewdly observing their manners to him. “Now isn't that cute, how they take to some people and not to others. They all love Uncle Silvio on sight. Stray dogs follow him in the road and won't leave him. Half these are strays.... They know he likes them, that's what it is. Dogs always know, they say, don't they.”

“Know what?” asked Henry, suspicious that she meant that dogs know a good character from a bad, which was what “they” (“they” meaning the great collection of noodles who constitute the public) do actually say. The things “they” say! They even say that children too (the most foolish of God's creatures) have this intuitive knowledge; they say that to drink hot tea makes you cooler, that it is more tiring going down-hill than up, that honesty is the best policy, that love makes the world go round, that “literally” bears the same meaning as “metaphorically” (“she was literally a mother to him,” they will say), that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, that those who say least feel most, that one must live. There is truly no limit to what “they,” in their folly, will say. So Henry, wincing among the suspicious dogs, moodily, and not for the first time, reflected.

Miss Longfellow did not answer his inquiry, but stood in the hall and cried, “Zio!” in a voice like a May cuckoo's.

A door opened, and in a moment Dr. Franchi, small and frail and charming, came forward with a sweet smile and hand outstretched, through a throng of fawning, grinning dogs.

“A pleasure indeed, Mr. Beechtree.”

“He is like Leo XIII.,” was Henry's thought. “Strange, that he should be a heretic!”

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