“I thanked her, and took one from her case, and I found it so much better than my own that I continued to smoke her cigarettes throughout the rest of the journey.  I must say that we got on very well.  I judged from the coronet on her cigarette-case, and from her manner, which was quite as well bred as that of any woman I ever met, that she was someone of importance, and though she seemed almost too good-looking to be respectable, I determined that she was some grande dame who was so assured of her position that she could afford to be unconventional.  At first she read her novel, and then she made some comment on the scenery, and finally we began to discuss the current politics of the Continent.  She talked of all the cities in Europe, and seemed to know everyone worth knowing.  But she volunteered nothing about herself except that she frequently made use of the expression, ‘When my husband was stationed at Vienna,’ or ’When my husband was promoted to Rome.’  Once she said to me, ’I have often seen you at Monte Carlo.  I saw you when you won the pigeon-championship.’  I told her that I was not a pigeon-shot, and she gave a little start of surprise.  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said; ’I thought you were Morton Hamilton, the English champion.’  As a matter of fact, I do look like Hamilton, but I know now that her object was to make me think that she had no idea as to who I really was.  She needn’t have acted at all, for I certainly had no suspicions of her, and was only too pleased to have so charming a companion.

“The one thing that should have made me suspicious was the fact that at every station she made some trivial excuse to get me out of the compartment.  She pretended that her maid was travelling back of us in one of the second-class carriages, and kept saying she could not imagine why the woman did not come to look after her, and if the maid did not turn up at the next stop, would I be so very kind as to get out and bring her whatever it was she pretended she wanted.

“I had taken my dressing-case from the rack to get out a novel, and had left it on the seat opposite to mine, and at the end of the compartment farthest from her.  And once when I came back from buying her a cup of chocolate, or from some other fool-errand, I found her standing at my end of the compartment with both hands on the dressing-bag.  She looked at me without so much as winking an eye, and shoved the case carefully into a corner.  ’Your bag slipped off on the floor,’ she said.  ’If you’ve got any bottles in it, you had better look and see that they’re not broken.’

“And I give you my word, I was such an ass that I did open the case and looked all through it.  She must have thought I was a Juggins.  I get hot all over whenever I remember it.  But, in spite of my dulness, and her cleverness, she couldn’t gain anything by sending me away, because what she wanted was in the hand-bag, and every time she sent me away the hand-bag went with me.