And as I can see that Miss Percy has
independence of character, and as I feel sure that she has not come to
Nevis on the catch, she can be of the greatest possible assistance to
me. What Constance says of the other young ladies is only too true.
They will pretend to comply, but gracefully evade any responsibility.
I can count upon none of them except Mary Denbigh, and she is rather
_passee_, poor thing."

"_Passee?_" cried Lady Constance. "At thirty? What do you expect? She
looks like an elegiac figure weeping on a tombstone. I can't stand the
sight of her. And it's all kept up to make herself interesting. Edwin
Hay has been dead eleven years----"

"Never mind poor Mary. We all know she is your pet abomination----"

"She gives me a cramp in my spleen."

"Well, to return to Mr. Warner. Will you all meet him when I ask him
to my sitting-room up-stairs? Will you spread the news of his coming
among the other guests? Hint that he has reformed? Excite in them a
desire to meet the great man?"

She did not speak in a tone of appeal, and there was a mounting fire
in her eye.

Lady Constance shrugged her shoulders. "You mean that you will cut
us if we don't. I never quarrel in the tropics. Besides, I have
buried too many of my old friends! I don't approve, but I shall be
interested, and my morals are as pure and solid as my new teeth. If
you can marry him to Mary Denbigh and leave her on the island----"

"And you, Emily?"

None had had more experience in yielding gracefully to social tyrants
than Mrs. Nunn. She thought Maria Hunsdon mad to take up with a
drunken poet, and could only be thankful that her charge was a
sensible, commonplace girl with no romantic notions in her head. "I
never think in the tropics, my dear Maria, and now that you are here
to think for me, and provide a little variety, so much the better.
What is your programme?"

"To ask him first for tea in my sitting-room, then for dinner; then
to organise picnics, and take him with us on excursions. I shall
frequently pick him up when I drive--in short before a fortnight has
passed he will be a respectable member of society, and accepted as a
matter of course."

"And what if he gets drunk?"

"That is what I purpose he shall not do. As soon as I know him well
enough I shall talk to him like a mother."

"Better let Miss Percy talk to him like a sister. Well, regulate the
universe to suit yourself. I hope you will not forget to order Nevis
to have no