Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 42).djvu/493

was that among the passengers was a lady whose appearance had the most singular effect on me. The moment I saw her I had a feeling that I had seen her somewhere before, but for the life of me I could not think where and when.

"I tell you I saw her go through the gate as clearly as I see you now."

She was a delightful person; full of resource, skilled in all sorts of what are known as "parlour tricks"; she could sing and recite, tell funny tales, perform conjuring tricks, and play on the piano and the banjo and the fiddle and, what was then the latest craze in musical instruments, the balalaika. She was good at bridge—some of the people said she was the best lady-player they had seen, and her knowledge of the sort of games which are calculated to amuse a general company was simply abnormal. She seemed to have lots of money, and some pretty dresses and some nice jewels. Before we were out of the Bay of Biscay she was the most prominent and popular person on board. By that time she had given people to understand, in a casual kind of way, that she had been an actress, and that she had been a singer, and that she had been an entertainer, and that she had written things and painted things—but I was commencing to wonder if she had ever been Mrs. Everard Brookes.