“And what must I do?” she reiterated.

I told her to give me time.  One is not in the habit of meeting abducted Lights of the Harem in the Embankment Gardens, beneath the National Liberal Club.  It was, in fact, a bewildering occurrence.  I looked around me.  Nothing seemed to have happened during the last ten minutes.  A pale young man on the next bench, whom I had noticed when I entered, was reading a dirty pink newspaper.  Pigeons and sparrows hopped about unconcernedly.  On the file of cabs, just perceptible through the foliage, the cabmen lolled in listless attitudes.  Sir Bartle Frere stolidly kept his back to me, not the least interested in this Gilbert a Becket story.  I always thought something was wrong with that man’s character.

What on earth could I tell her to do?  The best course was to find the infernal Harry.  I asked her how she came to lose him.  It appears he escorted her ashore at Southampton, after having scarcely set eyes on her during the voyage, put her into a railway carriage with strict injunctions not to stir until he claimed her, and then disappeared into space.

“Did he give you your ticket?”

“No.”

“What a young blackguard!” I exclaimed.

“I don’t like him at all,” she said.

How she managed to elude the ticket collector at Vauxhall I could not exactly discover.  Apparently she told him, in her confiding manner, that Harry had it, and when he found no Harry in the train and came back to say so, she turned her dewy imploring eyes on him and the sentimental varlet melted.  At Waterloo a man had told her she must get out of the carriage—­she had travelled alone in it —­and she had meekly obeyed.  She had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually found herself in the Embankment Gardens.  Then she had asked me how to find Harry.  Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket’s Saracen mother crying in London for Gilbert.  And the most ludicrous part of the resemblance was that she did not know the creature’s surname.

“By the way,” said I, “what is your name?”

“Carlotta.”

“Carlotta what? " I asked.

“I have no other name.”

“Your father—­the Vice-Consul—­had one.”

She wrinkled her young forehead in profound mental effort.

“Ramsbotham,” she said at last, triumphantly.

“Now look here, Miss Ramsbotham—­no,” I broke off.  “Such an appellation is anachronistic, incongruous, and infinitely absurd.  I can’t use it.  I must take the liberty of addressing you as Carlotta.”

“But I’ve told you that Carlotta is my name,” she said, in uncomprehending innocence.

“And mine is Sir Marcus Ordeyne.  People call me ‘Sir Marcus.’”

“Seer Marcous,” said Carlotta.

She did not seem at all impressed with the fact that she was talking to a member of the baronetage.