The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel B0082RD4EM

loungers, and a band was playing in the English Garden. From time to time a strain of music floated up to the window where the two men were sitting. Neither had spoken for some minutes, when Lynde asked his friend where he was staying.
    "At the Schweizerhof," replied Flemming. "I always take the hotel nearest the station. Few Americans go there, I fancy. It is wonderfully and fearfully Swiss. I was strolling in here to look through the register for some American autographs when I ran against you."
    "You had better bring your traps over here."
    "It would not be worth while. I am booked for Paris to-morrow night.
Ned—come with me!"
    "I can't, Flemming; I have agreed to go to Chamouni with the Denhams."
    "Don't!"
    "That is like advising a famishing man not to eat his last morsel of food. I have a presentiment it will all end there. I never had a presentiment before."
    "I had a presentiment once," said Flemming impressively. "I had a presentiment that a certain number—it was number twenty-seven—would draw the prize in a certain lottery. I went to the office, and number twenty-seven was one of the two numbers unsold! I bought it as quick as lightning, I dreamed of number twenty-seven three successive nights, and the next day it drew a blank."
    "That has the ring of the old Flemming!" cried Lynde, with an unforced laugh. "I am glad that I have not succeeded in turning all your joyous gold into lead. I'm not always such dull company as I have been to- night, with my moods and my presentiments. I owe them partly, perhaps, to not seeing Miss Denham to-day, the aunt having a headache."
    "You were not in a rollicking humor when I picked you up."
    "I had been cruising about town all the morning alone, making assaults on the Musee Fol, the Botanic Garden, and the Jewish Synagogue. In the afternoon I had wrecked myself on Rousseau's Island, where I sat on a bench staring at Pradier's poor statue of Jean Jacques until I fancied that the ugly bronze cannibal was making mouths at me. When the aunt has a headache, I suffer. Flemming, you must see Miss Denham, if only for a moment."
    "Of course I should like to see her, Ned."
    "You do not leave until evening," Lynde said, reflecting. "I think I can manage a little dinner for to-morrow. Now let us take a breath of fresh air. I know the queerest old nook, in the Rue de Chantpoulet, where the Bavarian beer is excellent and all the company smoke the most enormous porcelain pipes. Haven't I hit one of your weaknesses?"
    "You have hit a brace!"

VII
THE DENHAMS
    When Edward Lynde returned to the hotel that night, after parting with Flemming at the head of a crooked, gable-hung street leading to the Schweizerhof, the young man regretted that he had said anything on the subject of the Denhams, or rather, that he had spoken of the painful likeness which had haunted him so persistently. The friends had spent the gayest of evenings together at a small green-topped table in one corner of the smoky cafe. Over their beer and cheese they had chatted of old days at boarding-school and college, and this contact with the large, healthy nature of Flemming, which threw off depression as sunshine dissipates mist, had sent Lynde's vapors flying. Nothing was changed in the circumstances that had distressed him, yet some way a load had removed itself from his bosom. He was sorry he had mentioned that dark business at all. As he threaded the deserted streets—it was long after midnight—he planned a dinner to be given in his rooms the next day, and formulated a note of invitation to the ladies, which he would write when he got back to the hotel, and have in readiness for early delivery in the morning.
    Lynde was in one of those lightsome moods which, in that varying month, had not unfrequently followed a day of doubt and restless despondency. As he turned into the Quai des Bergues he actually hummed a bar or two of opera. He had not done that before in six weeks. They had been weeks of inconceivable torment and pleasure to Lynde.
    He had left home while still afflicted by David Lynde's death. Since the uncle's ill-advised marriage the intercourse between them, as the reader knows, had all but ceased; they had met only once, and then as if to bid each other farewell; but the ties had been very close, after all. In the weeks immediately following his guardian's death, the young man, occupied with settling the estate, of which he was one of the executors, scarcely realized his loss; but when he returned