November 25

300 PARK STREET, Friday morning, November 25th.

I know just the meaning of dust and ashes, for that is what I felt I had had for breakfast this morning, the day after "Carmen."

Lady Ver had given orders she was not to be disturbed, so I did not go near her, and crept down to the dining-room, quite forgetting the master of the house had arrived. There he was, a strange, tall, lean man with fair hair, and sad, cross, brown eyes, and a nose inclined to pink at the tip--a look of indigestion about him, I feel sure. He was sitting in front of a Daily Telegraph propped up on the teapot, and some cold, untasted sole on his plate.

I came forward. He looked very surprised.

"I--I'm Evangeline Travers," I announced.

He said "How d'you do?" awkwardly. One could see without a notion what that meant.

"I'm staying here," I continued. "Did you not know?"

"Then won't you have some breakfast? Beastly cold, I fear," politeness forced him to utter. "No, Ianthe never writes to me. I had not heard any news for a fortnight, and I have not seen her yet."

Manners have been drummed into me from early youth, so I said, politely, "You only arrived from Paris late last night, did you not?"

"I got in about seven o'clock, I think," he replied.