McQuaill nor the commanding Mr. Cholmondeley knew a great deal about the other; indeed, their friendship was of the sketchiest, to say the most of it. They had met at one of those crowded affairs contrived every once in a while, ostensibly for charity, although the charity specified is not always the real cause of the noise and social splendor and excitement.

It had happened at precisely such an affair with three celebrated jazz bands, a missionary bishop, and the more notable moving-picture star of the moment contributing equally to the success of the thing that Miss McQuaill was (in the elegant idiom of Mr. Cholmondeley) caught in an "ugly jam." She was selling programs on behalf of the destitute tea-tasters of Tchernigoff, deprived of their profession by one of the later edicts of the abominable Trotsky.

"I say, can I be of any use?" asked an exquisitely urbane individual in rather splendid evening clothes who looked vaguely familiar.

Miss McQuaill felt that she really ought to have remembered his name, and, of course, she couldn't.

"You look," continued the exquisitely urbane one, politely, "as if you wanted something."

He bowed-at least, he made what might have been a most Chesterfieldian sort of a bow if there had not been such an immense crowd.

"Pray, command me," he said. Miss McQuaill was tremendously impressed.

"I am," he added, suavely, with a rich and Old World courtesy, "at your service."

"Well, you might buy a program. And she smiled archly at the exquisitely urbane one as he produced a very clean and crisp dollar bill. "I'm sure we've met somewhere," she said. "Thanks, awfully."

"Oh, very likely

Presently the exquisitely urbane one acquired a name. It was Cholmondeley,

and Miss McQuaill felt more convinced than ever that she had met him before. At some immense crush or other.

"An ugly jam," suggested Mr. Cholmondeley.

For the remainder of the evening Mr. Cholmondeley proved to be indispensable. He procured her a glass of water at precisely the right time. He did this and did that, and finally saw her to her car with such magnificence Miss McQuaill regretted she had not asked him to call. Manners make a good deal more than a man. However, it stood to reason that they would meet again, at some affair or other, and sooner than later. And of course they did; it was at the Plaza, late one afternoon, and that day week they had tea together. They also arranged to dine together that night the following week at the Mont-Parnasse.

But, of course, Egbert couldn't foresee that, and consequently he stood at the edge of the pavement outside that celebrated restaurant staring up Broadway after the vanishing taxi with a singularly uncomfortable feeling that he had been an idiot to let Mr. Cholmondeley go off without leaving any sort of address behind. Almost anything might happen to him-and that would be the end of that— Hang it! It was an infernal nuisance. It was silly.

Still, as Egbert reflected, gloomily, the bigger the fool the better the luck. That was something, anyway.

The number of people rejoicing in the patronymic of McQuaill listed in the New York telephone directory is rather staggering, and second only to those more favored in the matter of nomenclature in the way of Smith, and it did not occur to Egbert to ring them all up until he managed to discover the missing Miss McQuaill. He had other duties. And two weeks passed without the slightest sign of Mr. Reginald Cholmondeley.

Of course, Mr. Cholmondeley might be delayed by illness-almost anything, apparently, might happen in New York. It was the most extraordinary sort of

other Cholmondeley, but that was in England. And there was poor old Adolphus Cholmondeley-but then he's dead."

That was the sort of thing one had to put up with. It was particularly exasperating; time passes with incredible rapidity, and leave of absence is absurdly short.

Mrs. Jefferson Waters-who lived in a large, red-brick, aloofly shuttered house in Washington Square believed that her brother's sister-in-law had an Irish coachman once by the name of McQuaill. Mrs. Waters's granddaughter remembered a very freckled, red-headed girl who came from Scotland at the convent she had been at just outside Paris. And Major Harris, at the club, stated flatly that, while he knew everybody everybody-in New York, he'd never even heard of the name of McQuaill.

"Might be one of these Sinn Fein people," he said, vaguely. "There are such a lot of 'em now, all of 'em Mc-Something or other."

And then Egbert was asked to dine with the Robertson Traills.

At precisely ten minutes to eight that evening Egbert, immaculately turned out, with a gardenia in his buttonhole and his eyeglass screwed firmly into its usual position, rang the bell at the enormous bronze doors of that vast and imposing pile of marble on Fifth Avenue that is the Robertson Traills' town house.

He was obsequiously and immediately let in by a footman, who took his hat and stick with an air of extreme gratitude, and ushered by another into a tremendous room rather dimly lit by tall candles and full of people talking. Egbert knew some of them. There was Mrs. de Grey, the novelist, who was talking with great condescension about her own books; there were Mr. Stuyvesant Jones with a red ribbon in his coat, and another man and Count MacPherson in Highland dress, and wearing all his papal decorations; and there was his

host, moving among his guests, a distinguished figure of a man. But, as usual, there was no sign of either Miss McQuaill or Mr. Reginald Cholmondeley.

"I say," remarked Egbert, by way of ingratiating himself with his host, as he shook hands with Mr. Robertson Traill, "do you happen to know anybody by the name of McQuaill?"

"McQuaill?" echoed Mr. Traill. "I'm- Why, I'm afraid I don't.”

There was a short, thoughtful silence, and Mr. Traill and Egbert regarded each other questioningly. And then Egbert coughed slightly-that unobtrusively arresting cough of those who are about to break a silence.

"Well, do you happen to know anybody by the name of Cholmondeley?" "Cholmondeley?" repeated Mr. Traill blankly, with a nervous, backward glance over his shoulder. "I'm afraid I don't happen to know him, either . . .

er—"

"Tall, good-lookin' fellow-was in the Brigade, you know."

"Oh, was he?"

"Yes. I thought you might have met him."

Mr. Traill shook his head. “Oh, dear, no-but, then, I meet so few people, especially-"

"But-but there he is!" interrupted Egbert, suddenly, in tremendous agitation and staring fixedly toward the door. "Well, I'll be blowed!"

Mr. Traill stared, too, at the door, with an uneasy suspicion that his guest had been exposed for too long a time to the sun; it had been a very hot day. Or perhaps he'd been drinking somewhere. Mr. Traill glanced at Egbert in not unreasonable alarm.

That young Briton continued to stare toward the door in a profound and apparent state of astonishment.

Cholmondeley! By gum! . . . Now, what on earth could one do about that little matter of the money? Or the other?

Mr. Traill looked hurriedly from his

guest to the door and from the door to his guest again, with a growing and ghastly sense of dismay.

"Cholmondeley? Who? What? Where?"

Egbert blushed violently. "Right over there," he said, nodding toward an urbane, impressively dignified man in evening clothes who was advancing toward them, looking neither to the left nor to the right, and who came to a stop some distance from Mr. Traill and said:

"Sir, dinner is served!" "Thank you, Henderson. . . . You-you don't mean Henderson, do you?" demanded Mr. Traill, in a hushed, unhappy voice.

After all, what was one to think?

But Henderson!

Mr. Traill eyed his young guest in obvious bewilderment. Everybody had suddenly stopped talking, even Mrs. de Grey. And everybody was looking at Mr. Traill. "Er-no," said Egbert, rather belatedly, turning a bright red and then white and then a brighter red than ever. "No, of course not!

"Of course not," he went on, breathlessly, after a very short, uneasy pause. "I er I mean that man standin' there, near the door.

It was extremely difficult to say anything; his tongue stuck awkwardly to the roof of his mouth in the most extraordinary way, and his mouth seemed to be extraordinarily dry. He experienced also a sudden and singularly unpleasant difficulty in so simple a matter as breathing. He attempted to assume an attitude of utter unconcern, to arch his eyebrows in order to express a certain slight amusement at his host's mistake. He contrived-by a superman effort of will-to

"No, I-er-I didn't," said Egbert. He stared at the urbanely important, black-coated figure of Cholmondeley, or Henderson, or whatever his name happened to be, really, moving about just behind his host, suavely superintending the noiseless activities of the footmena capable, commanding, ironic figure in the soft, ghostly radiance of shaded candles.

The lady sitting at Egbert's left coughed.

"Oh, I say! I'm-I'm so sorry."
"Not at all."

"I was thinking, as a matter of fact."
Thinking!

Egbert suddenly wanted to laugh. He might have said with just as much truth that he'd been flying, or deep-sea diving. Rather vaguely he heard a reproachful feminine voice saying:

"Have you read Mrs. de Grey's ast book?"

And his gaze fell again on Cholmondeley or Henderson, or whatever his name really was. "What a simply damnable I say, I am sorry- I mean," he said, immediately, "I think it's capital-Mrs. de Grey's book, you know.' There was a shocked pause.

"I've-er-I've been readin' a lot lately. Not really jolly books. Lot of rot you know; that's the trouble. Make you think. I'm gettin' to be simply blitherin'. Fact. Now, when you were talkin' to me just a moment ago I was miles off, er-thinkin'."

Somebody poured something in his glass-something sparkling and cool and golden. Egbert watched the bubbles rising for a swift instant and then gulped at it feverishly.