“For instance?”

“She wanted me to tell her if you still had in your possession certain letters of hers,” Aynesworth said.

“Good!  What did you say?”

“I told her, of course,” Aynesworth continued, “that having been in your service for a few hours only, I was scarcely in a position to know.  I ventured further to remind her that such questions, addressed from her to me, were, to say the least of it, improper.”

Wingrave’s lips parted in what should have been a smile, but the spirit of mirth was lacking.

“And then?”

“There was nothing else,” Aynesworth answered.  “She simply dismissed me.”

“I can see,” Wingrave remarked, “your grievance.  You are annoyed because she regarded you as too easy a victim.”

“Perhaps,” Aynesworth admitted.

“There was some excuse for her, after all,” Wingrave continued coolly.  “She possesses powers which you yourself have already admitted, and you, I should say, are a fairly impressionable person, so far as her sex is concerned.  Confess now, that she did not leave you altogether indifferent.”

“Perhaps not,” Aynesworth admitted reluctantly.  He did not care to say more.

“In case you should feel any curiosity on the subject,” Wingrave remarked, “I may tell you that I have those letters which she was so anxious to know about, and I shall keep them safe—­even from you!  You can amuse yourself with her if you like.  You will never be able to tell her more than I care for her to know.”

Aynesworth continued his dinner in silence.  After all, he was beginning to fear that he had made a mistake.  Lovell had somehow contrived to impart a subtly tragic note to his story, but the outcome of it all seemed to assume a more sordid aspect.  These two would meet, there would be recriminations, a tragic appeal for forgiveness, possibly some melodramatic attempt at vengeance.  The glamour of the affair seemed to him to be fading away, now that he had come into actual contact with it.  It was not until he began to study his companion during a somewhat prolonged silence that he felt the reaction.  It was then that he began to see new things, that he felt the enthusiasm kindled by Lovell’s strangely told story begin to revive.  It was not the watching for events more or less commonplace which would repay him for the step he had taken; it was the study of this man, placed in so strange a position,—­a man come back to life, after years of absolute isolation.  He had broken away from the chain which links together men of similar tastes and occupations, and which goes to the creation of type.  He was in a unique position!  He was in the world, but not of it.  He was groping about amongst familiar scenes, over which time had thrown the pall of unfamiliarity.  What manner of place would he find—­what manner of place did he desire to find?  It was here that the real interest of the situation culminated.  At least, so Aynesworth thought then.