Langholm was sufficiently startled at the sound of his own name, breaking in upon the reflections indicated, but to find at his elbow the very face which was in his mind was to lose all power of immediate reply.

“My name is Severino,” explained the other.  “I was introduced to you an hour or two ago at the club.”

“Ah, to be sure!” cried Langholm, recovering.  “Odd thing, though, for we must have left about the same time, and I never saw you till this moment.”

Severino took the vacant place by Langholm’s side.  “Mr. Langholm,” said he, a tremor in his soft voice, “I have a confession to make to you.  I followed you from the club!”

“You followed me?”

Langholm could not help the double emphasis; to him it seemed a grotesque turning of the tables, a too poetically just ending to that misspent day.  It was all he could do to repress a smile.

“Yes, I followed you,” the young Italian repeated, with his taking accent, in his touching voice; “and I beg your pardon for doing so—­though I would do the same again—­I will tell you why.  I thought that you were talking about me while I was strumming to them at the club.  It is possible, of course, that I was quite mistaken; but when you went out I stopped at once and asked questions.  And they told me you were a friend of—­a great friend of mine—­of Mrs. Minchin!”

“It is true enough,” said Langholm, after a pause.  “Well?”

“She was a very great friend of mine,” repeated Severino.  “That was all.”

And he sighed.

“So I have heard,” said Langholm, with sympathy.  “I can well believe it, for I might almost say the same of her myself.”

The ’bus toiled on beside the park.  The two long lines of lights rose gently ahead until they almost met, and the two men watched them as they spoke.

“Until to-day,” continued Severino, “I did not know whether she was dead or alive.”

“She is both alive and well.”

“And married again?”

“And married again.”

There was a long pause.  The park ended first.

“I want you to do me a great favor,” said Severino in Knightsbridge.  “She was so good to me!  I shall never forget it, and yet I have never been able to thank her.  I nearly died—­it was at that time—­and when I remembered, she had disappeared.  I beg and beseech you, Mr. Langholm, to tell me her name, and where she is living now!”

Langholm looked at his companion in the confluence of lights at the Sloane Street corner.  The pale face was alight with passion, the sunken eyes ablaze.  “I cannot tell you,” he answered, shortly.

“Is it your own name?”

“Good God, no!”

And Langholm laughed harshly.

“Will you not even tell me where she lives?”

“I cannot, without her leave; but if you like I will tell her about you.”

There was no answer as they drove on.  Then of a sudden Langholm’s arm was seized and crushed by bony fingers.