ntempt in
the allusion--she meant the southern winters, the foreign climates,
the vain experiments, the lonely waitings, the wasted hours, the
interminable rains, the bad food, the pottering, humbugging doctors,
the damp _pensions_, the chance encounters, the fitful apparitions, of
fellow-travellers.

"Why should n't you speak for yourself alone? I am glad _you_ like him,
Mildred."

"If you don't like him, why do you give him orangeade?"

At this inquiry Kate began to laugh, and her sister continued,--

"Of course you are glad I like him, my dear. If I did n't like him, and
you did, it would n't be satisfactory at all. I can imagine nothing more
miserable; I should n't die in any sort of comfort."

Kate Theory usually checked this sort of allusion--she was always too
late--with a kiss; but on this occasion she added that it was a long
time since Mildred had tormented her so much as she had done to-day.
"You will make me hate him," she added.

"Well, that proves you don't already," Milly rejoined; and it happened
that almost at this moment they saw, in the golden afternoon, Captain
Benyon's boat approaching the steps at the end of the garden. He came
that day, and he came two days later, and he came yet once again after
an interval equally brief, before Percival Theory arrived, with Mrs.
Percival, from Borne. He seemed anxious to crowd into these few days, as
he would have said, a good deal of intercourse with the two remarkably
nice girls--or nice women, he hardly knew which to call them--whom in
the course of a long, idle, rather tedious detention at Naples, he had
discovered in the lovely suburb of Posilippo. It was the American consul
who had put him into relation with them; the sisters had had to sign, in
the consul's presence, some law-papers, transmitted to them by the man
of business who looked after their little property in America, and the
kindly functionary, taking advantage of the pretext (Captain Benyon
happened to come into the consulate as he was starting, indulgently, to
wait upon the ladies) to bring together "two parties" who, as he said,
ought to appreciate each other, proposed to his fellow-officer in the
service of the United States that he should go with him as witness
of the little ceremony. He might, of course, take his clerk, but the
captain would do much better; and he represented to Benyon that the Miss
Theorys (singular name, wa' n't it?) suffered--he was sure--from a lack
of society; a