y reason of inadequate waiting, we continued to draw her out, humour

her egotism, and cause her to make a most ridiculous display of herself,
until at last, my sentiment changing, I felt genuinely sorry for her.

"Certainly," I remarked to Ulrica as we left the table, "this is the most

extraordinary collection of tabbies I've ever met."

"My dear," she said, "what has been puzzling me all the evening is
their place of origin. Some, I regret to say, are actually our own
compatriots. But where do they come from?"

"It's a special breed peculiar to pensions on the Riviera," I remarked;

and together we ascended to the frowsy drawing-room, where the red
plush-covered furniture exuded an odour of mustiness, and the carpet was
sadly moth-eaten and thread-bare.

Around the central table a dozen angular women of uncertain age

grouped themselves and formed a sewing-party; a retired colonel, who
seemed a good fellow, buried himself in the Contemporary; a decrepit old
gentleman wearing a skull-cap and a shawl about his shoulders, heaped
logs upon the fire and sat with his feet on the fender, although the
atmosphere was stifling, while somebody else induced a young lady with a
voice like a file to sing a plaintive love-song, accompanied by the untuned
piano.

During my previous winters in the South I had stayed at hotels. In my

ignorance of the ways of cheap visitors to the Riviera, I believed this
congregation to be unique, but Ulrica assured me that it was typical of all
English pensions along the Côte d'Azur, from Cannes to Bordighera, and I
can now fully endorse her statement.

To describe in detail the many comic scenes enacted is unnecessary.

The people were too ludicrous for words. One family in especial
endeavoured to entice us to friendliness. Its head was a very tall, muscular,
black-haired French-woman, who had married an Englishman. The latter
had died fifteen years ago, leaving her with a son and daughter, the former
a school boy of sixteen, and the latter a fair-haired and very freckled girl of
perhaps twenty. The woman's name was Egerton, and she was of that
dashing type who can wear scarlet dresses at dinner, and whose cheeks
dazzle one's eyes on account of the rouge upon them. She was loud,
coarse, and vulgar. For the benefit of all the others, she spoke daily of the

delicacies prepared by her own chef, sneered at the food of the pension,
and ordered special messes for her own consumption. Before we had
known her an hour she had given us a description of the wonderful interior
of her house in Rome, enumerated her servants, and gave us to understand
that she was exceedingly well-off, and quite a superior person. The people
one meets on the Riviera are really very entertaining.

Ulrica was grimly sarcastic. As we had neither intention nor inclination

to associate with this superior relict, we politely snubbed her, taking care
that it should not be done in secret.

"I don't think our effort at economy has met with very much success," I
remarked to Ulrica, when about a week later I sat over the cup of half-cold
coffee, the stale egg, the hunk of bread and the pat of rancid butter, which
together formed my breakfast.

"No, a week of it is quite sufficient," she laughed. "We'll leave to-

morrow."

"Then you've given notice?"

"Of course. I only came here for a week's amusement. We'll go on to

the 'Grand.'"

So on the following day our trunks were called for by the hotel
omnibus, and we took up our quarters in that well-known hotel on the Quai
St. Jean Baptiste. Ulrica had known the Riviera ever since her girlhood.
With her parents she had gone abroad each autumn, had seen most of the
sights, and had thus received her education as a smart woman.

We were in the salon of the "Grand" on the night of our arrival, when
suddenly someone uttered my name. We both turned quickly, and to our
surprise saw two men we knew quite well in London standing before us.
One was Reginald Thorne, a dark-haired and more than usually good-
looking youth of about twenty-two or so, while the other was Gerald
Keppel, a thin, fair-moustached young man, some seven years his senior,
son of old Benjamin Keppel, the well-known South African milli