The stranger stepped back with a word of apology, and I took note of him for a fellow-countryman, and a worldly buck of fashion indeed, almost as cap-a-pie the automobilist as my mysterious spiller of cider had been the pedestrian.  But this was no game-chicken; on the contrary (so far as a glance in the dusk of the archway revealed him), much the picture for framing in a club window of a Sunday morning; a seasoned, hard-surfaced, knowing creature for whom many a head waiter must have swept previous claimants from desired tables.  He looked forty years so cannily that I guessed him to be about fifty.

We were passing him when he uttered an ejaculation of surprise and stepped forward again, holding out his hand to my companion, and exclaiming: 

“Where did you come from?  I’d hardly have known you.”

Oliver seemed unconscious of the proffered hand; he stiffened visibly and said: 

“I think there must be some mistake.”

“So there is,” said the other promptly.  “I have been misled by a resemblance.  I beg your pardon.”

He lifted his cap slightly, going on, and we entered the courtyard to find a cheerful party of nine or ten men and women seated about a couple of tables.  Like the person we had just encountered, they all exhibited a picturesque elaboration of the costume permitted by their mode of travel; making effective groupings in their ample draperies of buff and green and white, with glimpses of a flushed and pretty face or two among the loosened veilings.  Upon the tables were pots of tea, plates of sandwiches, Madame Brossard’s three best silver dishes heaped with fruit, and some bottles of dry champagne from the cellars of Rheims.  The partakers were making very merry, having with them (as is inevitable in all such parties, it seems) a fat young man inclined to humour, who was now upon his feet for the proposal of some prankish toast.  He interrupted himself long enough to glance our way as we crossed the garden; and it struck me that several pairs of brighter eyes followed my young companion with interest.  He was well worth it, perhaps all the more because he was so genuinely unconscious of it; and he ran up the gallery steps and disappeared into his own rooms without sending even a glance from the corner of his eye in return.

I went almost as quickly to my pavilion, and, without lighting my lamp, set about my preparations for dinner.

The party outside, breaking up presently, could be heard moving toward the archway with increased noise and laughter, inspired by some exquisite antic on the part of the fat young man, when a girl’s voice (a very attractive voice) called, “Oh, Cressie, aren’t you coming?” and a man’s replied, from near my veranda:  “Only stopping to light a cigar.”

A flutter of skirts and a patter of feet betokened that the girl came running back to join the smoker.  “Cressie,” I heard her say in an eager, lowered tone, “who was he?”