“He’s reading the Neue Freie Presse,” remarked Dick, “by which token I argue that he’s some sort of a Dutchman.  He’s probably a traveling agent for a Vienna glass-factory, or a drummer for a cheap wine-house, or the agent for a Munich brewery.  That would account for his travels.  We simply fall in with his commercial itinerary.”

“You seem to imply, brother, that my charms are not in themselves sufficient.  But a commercial traveler hardly commands that fine repose, that distinction—­that air of having been places and seen things and known people—­”

“Tush!  I have seen American book agents who had all that—­even the air of having been places!  Your instincts ought to serve you better, Shirley.  It’s well that we go on to-morrow.  I shall warn mother and the governor that you need watching.”

Shirley Claiborne’s eyes rested again upon the calm reader of the Neue Freie Presse.  The waiter was now placing certain dishes upon the table without, apparently, interesting the young gentleman in the least.  Then the unknown dropped his newspaper, and buttered a roll reflectively.  His gaze swept the room for the first time, passing over the heads of Miss Claiborne and her brother unseeingly—­with, perhaps, too studied an air of indifference.

“He has known real sorrow,” persisted Shirley, her elbows on the table, her fingers interlocked, her chin resting idly upon them.  “He’s traveling in an effort to forget a blighting grief,” the girl continued with mock sympathy.

“Then let us leave him in peace!  We can’t decently linger in the presence of his sacred sorrow.”

Captain Richard Claiborne and his sister Shirley had stopped at Geneva to spend a week with a younger brother, who was in school there, and were to join their father and mother at Liverpool and sail for home at once.  The Claibornes were permanent residents of Washington, where Hilton Claiborne, a former ambassador to two of the greatest European courts, was counsel for several of the embassies and a recognized authority in international law.  He had been to Rome to report to the Italian government the result of his efforts to collect damages from the United States for the slaughter of Italian laborers in a railroad strike, and had proceeded thence to England on other professional business.

Dick Claiborne had been ill, and was abroad on leave in an effort to shake off the lingering effects of typhoid fever contracted in the Philippines.  He was under orders to report for duty at Fort Myer on the first of April, and it was now late March.  He and his sister had spent the morning at their brother’s school and were enjoying a late dejeuner at the Monte Rosa.  There existed between them a pleasant comradeship that was in no wise affected by divergent tastes and temperaments.  Dick had just attained his captaincy, and was the youngest man of his rank in the service.  He did not know an orchid from a hollyhock, but no man in the army was a better judge of a cavalry horse, and if a Wagner recital bored him to death his spirit rose, nevertheless, to the bugle, and he drilled his troop until he could play with it and snap it about him like a whip.