to know, but I have neither time, health, nor inclination for
conventional English visiting--for your ponderous style of hospitality.
I am quite sure that my ideas of men and manners would not coincide with
those of the quiet country ladies and gentlemen of these parts; while
theirs would seem to me terribly wearisome and jejune. Therefore, as I
take it, we are better apart."

By and by Ducie discovered that his host was not so entirely isolated
from the world as at first sight he appeared to be.

Occasional society there was of a certain kind, intermittent, coming and
going like birds of passage. One, or sometimes two visitors, of whose
arrival Ducie had heard no previous mention, would now and again put in
an appearance at the dinner-table, would pass one, or at the most two
nights at Bon Repos, and would then be seen no more, having gone as
mysteriously as they had come.

These visitors were always foreigners, now of one nationality, now of
another: and were always closeted privately with Platzoff for several
hours. In appearance some of them were strangely shabby and unkempt, in
a wild, un-English sort of fashion, while others among them seemed like
men to whom the good things of this world were no strangers. But
whatever their appearance, they were all treated by Platzoff as honoured
guests for whom nothing at his command was too good.

As a matter of course, they were all introduced to Captain Ducie, but
none of their names had been heard by him before--indeed, he had a dim
suspicion, gathered, he could not have told how, that the names by which
they were made known to him were in some cases fictitious ones, and
appropriated for that occasion only. But to the Captain that fact