It was some time later that Merefleet entered the smoking-room to satisfy
a certain curiosity which had taken possession of him. He looked round
the room as he sat down, and almost at once his attention lighted upon a
broad-shouldered man of about thirty with a plain, square-jawed face of
great determination, who sat, puffing at a short pipe, by the open
window.
Merefleet silently observed this man for some time, till, his scrutiny
making itself felt, the object of it wheeled abruptly in his chair and
returned it.
Merefleet leant forward. It was so little his custom to open conversation
with a stranger that his manner was abrupt and somewhat forced on this
unusual occasion.
"I believe I ought to know you," he said. "But I can't recall your name."
The reply was delivered in a manner as curt as his own. "My name is
Seton," said the stranger. "As you have only met me once before, you
probably won't recall it now."
Merefleet nodded comprehension. He loved the straight, quiet speech of
Englishmen. There was no flurry or palaver about this specimen. He spoke
as a man quite sure of himself and wholly independent of his fellow men.
"Ah, I remember you now," Merefleet said. "You came as Ralph Warrender's
guest to a club dinner in New York. Am I right?"
"Perfectly," said Seton. "You were the guest of the evening. You made a
good speech, I remember. You were looking horribly ill. I suppose that is
how I came to notice you particularly."
"I was ill," said Merefleet, "or I should have been out of New York
before that dinner came off. I always detested the place. And Warrender
would have done far better in my place."
"I am not an admirer of Warrender," said Seton bluntly.
Merefleet made no comment. He was never very free in the statement of his
opinion.
"The railway accident in which his wife was killed took place immediately
after that dinner, I believe?" he observed presently. "I remember hearing
of it when I was recovering."
"It was a shocking thing--that accident," said Seton thoughtfully. "It's
odd that Americans always manage to do that sort of thing on such a
gigantic scale."
"They do everything on a gigantic scale," said Merefleet. "What became of
Warrender afterwards? It was an awful business for him."
"I don't know anything about him," Seton answered, with a brevity that
seemed to betray lack of interest. "He was no friend of mine, though I
chanced to be his guest on that occasion. I was distantly connected with
his wife, and I inherited some of her money at her death. She was a rich
woman, as you probably know."
"So I heard. But I have never found New York gossip particularly
attractive."
Seton leant his elbow on the window-sill and gazed meditatively into the
night. "If it comes to that," he said slowly, "no gossip is exactly
edifying. And to be the victim of it is to be in the most undesirable
position under the sun."
It struck Merefleet that he uttered the words with some force, almost
with the deliberate intention of conveying a warning; and, being the
last man in the world to attempt to fathom the wholly irrelevant affairs
of his neighbour, he dropped into silence and began to smoke.
Seton sat motionless for some time. The murmur of a conversation that was
being sleepily sustained by two men in the room behind them created no
disturbing influence. Presently Seton spoke casually, but with that in
his tone which made Merefleet vaguely conscious of an element of
suspicion.
"You didn't expect to see me just now, did you?" he asked.
"No," said Merefleet. "I should have taken the trouble to call your name
to mind before I spoke if I had."
Seton nodded. "I saw you at _table d'hôte_" he remarked. "I was with my
cousin at the other end of the room. You were gone when we got up."
"Your cousin?" said Merefleet deliberately. "Is that the American lady
who is staying here?"
"Yes. Miss Ward. She is from New York, too. You may have seen her there."
"No," said Merefleet. "I know very little of New York society, or any
society for the matter of that."
Seton turned and looked at him with a smile. "Odd," he said. "For there
can be scarcely a man, woman, or child, here or in America, who does not
know you by name."
"Not so bad as that, I hope," said Merefleet. And Seton laughed.
"You have the reputation for shunning celebrity," he remarked.
"So I understand," said Merefleet. "I hope the reputation will be my
protection."
Young Seton became genial from that point onward. Without being
communicative, he managed to convey the impression that he was quite
prepared to be friendly. And for some reason unexplained Merefleet was
pleased. He went to bed that night with somewhat revised ideas on the
subject of society in general and the society of American girls in
particular.