“You’re looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money,” said Mr. Mangles, bluntly.

“I was looking at him with suspicion,” admitted Deulin, “but not on that account.  No one owes me money.  It is the other way round, and it is not I who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand.  No, I was looking at our friend because I thought he was lively.  Did he strike you as lively when he came in?”

“Not what I should call a vivacious man,” said Mangles, looking dismally across the room.  “There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm as he came in perhaps.”

“Yes,” said Deulin, in a low voice.  “That is bad.  There is usually something wrong when Cartoner is lively.  He is making an effort, you know.”

They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.

“What beautiful violets,” said he to Netty.  “Surely Warsaw did not produce those?”

“Yes, they are pretty,” answered Netty, making a little movement to show the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also.  Her waist was very round and slender.  “They came from that shop in the Senatorska or the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street.  Ulrich, I think, was the name.”

And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.

“Yes,” said Deulin, slowly.  “Ulrich is the name.  And you are fond of violets?”

“I love them.”

Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when dinner was announced.

“It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska,” said Mr. Mangles, when they were seated.  But Netty did not wish to be made the subject of the conversation any longer.  She was telling Cartoner, who sat next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of steamer gossip known only to himself and her.  Is it not an accepted theory that quiet men like best those girls who are lively?

Miss Mangles dispensed her brother’s hospitality with that rather labored ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such times as they are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel comfortable, and to enjoy themselves according to their lights.

Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information respecting Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.

“And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?” he said, noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.

“I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and traversed the whole length of the street.”

“And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?” asked the Frenchman, earnestly.

“I have.”

And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen hundred years.

“I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women’s Congress meetings—­and I may publish,” she said.