“Oh!  I believe he is coming in,” I gasped, and my knees began to tremble beneath me.

“Suppose he is,” Lillian snapped back.  Her tone held a contemptuous impatience that braced me as nothing else could.  “The man has a right to come in here if he wishes.  It may be a mere coincidence, or he may have followed you.  You’re rather fetching in that little sport rig, my dear, as your mirror probably told you this morning.  Unless he obtrudes himself there is nothing you can do or say, and if he should attempt to get fresh—­well, I pity him, that’s all.”

Lillian’s threatening air was so comical that I lost my nervousness and laughed outright at her belligerency.  The laugh was not a loud one, but it evidently was audible to the man entering the door, for he turned and cast a quick, sharp look upon me before moving on to a table farther down the room.  The waitress indicated a chair, which, if he had taken it, would have kept his back toward us.  He refused it with a slight shake of the head, and passing around to the other side of the table, sat down in a chair which commanded a full view of us.

Lillian’s foot beat a quick tattoo beneath the table.  “The insolent old goat,” she murmured, vindictively.  “He’d better look out.  I’d hate to forget I’m a perfect lady, but I’m afraid I may have to break loose if that chap stays around here.”

“Oh, don’t say anything to him, Lillian,” I pleaded, terribly distressed and upset at the very thought of a possible scene.  “Let’s hurry through our luncheon and get out.”

“We’ll do nothing of the kind,” Lillian said.  “Don’t think about the man at all, just go ahead and enjoy your luncheon as if he were not here at all.  I’ll attend to his case good and plenty if he gets funny.”

In spite of Lillian Underwood’s kindly admonition I could not enjoy the delicious lunch we had ordered.  The presence of a mysterious man at the table opposite ours robbed the meal of its flavor and me of my self-possession.

I could not be sure, of course, that the man had purposely followed me from the little reception room of the Sydenham, where I had waited for Lillian.  There I had first seen him staring frankly at me with such a sad, mysterious, tragic look in his eyes that I had been most bewildered and upset by it.  But his appearance at the tea room within a few minutes of our entering it, and his choice of a chair which faced our table indicated rather strongly that he had purposely followed me.

Whether or not Lillian’s flashing eyes and the withering look she gave him deterred him from gazing at me as steadily as he had at the hotel I had no means of knowing.  At any rate, he did not once stare openly at me.  I should have known it if he had, for his position was such that unless I kept my eyes steadily fixed upon my plate, I could not help but see him.  He was unobtrusive, but I received the impression that he was keeping track of every movement in the furtive glances he cast at us from time to time.