ing we have played, she was getting the better of me when
Pasquale appeared.

I repeated my statement. Cribbage certainly was an excellent game.
Pasquale laughed.

"Of course it is. A venerable pastime. Darby and Joan have played it of
evenings for the last thousand years. Please go on."

But Carlotta threw her cards on the table and herself on the sofa and
said she would prefer to hear Pasquale talk.

"He says such funny things."

Then she jumped from the sofa and handed him the box of chocolates that
is never far from her side. How lithe her movements are!

"Pasquale says you were his schoolmaster, and used to beat him with a
big stick," she remarked, turning her head toward me, while Pasquale
helped himself to a sweet.

He was clumsy in his selection, and the box slipped from Carlotta's
hand and the contents rolled upon the floor. They both went on hands and
knees to pick them up, and there was much laughing and whispering.

It is curious that I cannot recall Pasquale having alluded, in
Carlotta's presence, to our early days. It was on my tongue to ask
when he committed the mendacity--for in that school not only did the
assistant masters not have the power of the cane, but Pasquale, being
in the sixth form at the time I joined, was exempt from corporal
punishment--when they both rose flushed from their grovelling beneath
the table, and some merry remark from Pasquale put the question out of
my head.

All this is unimportant. The main result of Pasquale's visit this
evening is a discovery.

Now, is it, after all, a discovery, or only the non-moral intellect's
sinister attribution of motives?

"A baby in long clothes would have seen through it," said Pasquale.
"Lord bless you, if I were in your position I would go on board that
yacht, I'd make violent love to every female there, like the gentleman
in Mr. Wycherley's comedy, I'd fill a salmon fly-book with samples of
their hair, I'd make them hate one another like poison, and at the end
of the voyage I'd announce my engagement to Carlotta, and when they
all came to the wedding I'd make the fly-book the most conspicuous of
wedding presents on the table, from the bridegroom to the bride. By
George! I'd cure them of the taste for man-hunting!"

I wonder what impelled me to tell Pasquale of the proposed yachting
cruise? We sat smoking by the open window, long after Carlotta had been
sent to bed, and looking at a full moon sailing over the tops of the
trees