Lewis congratulated himself on his luck.  “I should like very much to come to the dance, and I especially want to meet Mr. Marker.”

“He is half Scotch, too,” said the lady.  “His mother was a Kirkpatrick or some name like that, and he actually seems to talk English with a kind of Scotch accent.  Of course that may be the German part of him.  He is a Pomeranian count or something of the sort, and very rich.  You might get him to go with you into the hills.”

“I wish we could,” said Lewis falsely.  His curiosity was keenly excited.

“Why does he come up here such a lot?” George asked.

“I suppose because he likes to ‘knock about,’ as you call it.  He is a tremendous traveller.  He has been into Tibet and all over Turkestan and Persia.  Gilbert says that he is the wonder of the age.”

“Is he here just now?”

“No, I don’t think so.  I know he is coming to-morrow, because he wrote me about it, and promised to come to my dance.  But he is a very busy man, so I don’t suppose he will arrive till just before.  He wrote me from Gilgit, so he may find Gilbert there and bring him up with him.”

Marker, Marker.  The air seemed full of the strange name.  Lewis saw again Wratislaw’s wrinkled face when he talked of him, and remembered his words.  “You were within an ace of meeting one of the cleverest men living, a cheerful being in whom the Foreign Office is more interested than in any one else in the world.”  Wratislaw had never been in the habit of talking without good authority.  This Marker must be indeed a gentleman of parts.

Then conversation dwindled.  Lewis, his mind torn between bitter memories and the pressing necessities of his mission, lent a stupid ear to Mrs. Logan’s mild complaints, her gossip about Bardur, her eager questions about home.  George manfully took his place, and by a fortunate clumsiness steered the flow of the lady’s talk from Glenavelin and the Wisharts.  Lewis spoke now and then, when appealed to, but he was busy thinking out his own problem.  On the morrow night he should meet Marker, and his work would reveal itself.  Meanwhile he was in the dark, the flimsiest adventurer on the wildest of errands.  This easy, settled place, these Englishmen whose minds held fast by polo and games, these English ladies who had no thought beyond little social devices to relieve the monotony of the frontier, all seemed to make a mockery of his task.  He had fondly imagined himself going to a certainty of toil and danger; to his vexation this certainty seemed to be changing into the most conventional of visits to the most normal of places.  But to-morrow he should see Marker; and his hope revived at the prospect.

“It is so pleasant seeing two fresh fellow-countrymen,” Mrs. Logan was saying.  “Do you know, you two people look quite different from our men up here.  They are all so dried up and tired out.  Our complexions are all gone, and our eyes have got that weariness of the sun in them which never goes away even when we go home again.  But you two look quite keen and fresh and enthusiastic.  You mustn’t mind compliments from an old woman, but I wish our own people looked as nice as you.  You will make us all homesick.”