"Not when Monsieur speaks like that," she said in musically accented English, and turned towards the two new guests who were taking their places at the adjoining table. One was a Frenchman in the customary white of the island, dressed with that scrupulous attention to the person of the well-bred which shows a proper regard for reasonable conventions, stopping well on the right side of foppishness. Perhaps this care also served to cover a slenderness of purse and wardrobe. The effortless grace of his manner, too, fell short of that extravagance considered by the untravelled as characteristic of his race.
The other stranger, rougher in exterior, was a native of the island, but a fellow countryman by descent, with the look of one who gained a haphazard living from the seas.
"Sh," whispered Carlotta, "that's intrestin'."
The seafaring man sat directly facing their table. Even in the slumberous, torpid shadows of the place, his eyes gleamed with the expectant look of one about to drive a hard and profitable bargain. The other sat at right-angles to him.
The girl Linda hovered over him with an amorous interest in her smouldering eyes, which was not lost on Carlotta, although she couldn't hear the words the former said to him, and wouldn't have understood if she had.
"Monsieur has not come to 'The Café of Many Tongues' for oh—ever so long! I—we are all so happy to see you again," was the exact translation, and Carlotta hit somewhere near the truth when she whispered to the motionless MacAllister:
"Mabel's askin the Count where's he been since last Satur-
