r good-night.

Well, this being so, she would put off telling him the truth
about her nest-egg, and about Rose not being his hostess after all,
till next day. Pity to spoil things. She had been going to blurt it
out as soon as he had had a rest, but it did seem a pity to disturb
such a very beautiful frame of mind as that of Mellersh this first day.
Let him too get more firmly fixed in heaven. Once fixed he wouldn't
mind anything.

Her face sparkled with delight at the instantaneous effect of San
Salvatore. Even the catastrophe of the bath, of which she had been
told when she came in from the garden, had not shaken him. Of course
all that he had needed was a holiday. What a brute she had been to him
when he wanted to take her himself to Italy. But this arrangement, as
it happened, was ever so much better, though not through any merit of
hers. She talked and laughed gaily, not a shred of fear of him left in
her, and even when she said, struck by his spotlessness, that he looked
so clean that one could eat one's dinner off him, and Scrap laughed,
Mellersh laughed too. He would have minded that at home, supposing
that at home she had had the spirit to say it.

It was a successful evening. Scrap, whenever she looked at Mr.
Wilkins, saw him in his towel, dripping water, and felt indulgent.
Mrs. Fisher was delighted with him. Rose was a dignified hostess in
Mr. Wilkins's eyes, quiet and dignified, and he admired the way she
waived her right to preside at the head of the table--as a graceful
compliment, of course, to Mrs. Fisher's age. Mrs. Arbuthnot was,
opined Mr. Wilkins, naturally retiring. She was the most retiring of
the three ladies. He had met her before dinner alone for a moment in
the drawing-room, and had expressed in appropriate language his sense
of her kindness in wishing him to join her party, and she had been
retiring. Was she shy? Probably. She had blushed, and murmured as if
in deprecation, and then the others had come in. At dinner she talked
least. He would, of course, become better acquainted with her during
the next few days, and it would be a pleasure, he was sure.

Meanwhile Lady Caroline was all and more than all Mr. Wilkins had
imagined, and had received his speeches, worked in skillfully between
the courses, graciously; Mrs. Fisher was the exact old lady he had been
hoping to come across all his professional life; and Lotty had not only
immensely improved, but was obviously au