essimism. What could be worse than to be caught red-handed
in a surreptitious honeymoon?

She noticed his confusion, and he knew that she noticed it. She was a
little girl. But she was also a little woman, a little Frenchwoman, who
spoke English perfectly--and yet with a difference! They had flirted
together, she and Mr Coe. She had a new mother now, but for years she
had been without a mother, and she would receive callers at her
father's house (if he happened to be out) with a delicious imitation of
a practised hostess.

He raised his hat and shook hands and tried to play the game.

"What are you doing here, Mimi?" he asked.

"What are _you_ doing here?" she parried, laughing. And then, perceiving
his increased trouble, and that she was failing in tact, she went on
rapidly, with a screwing up of the childish shoulders and something
between a laugh and a grin: "It's my back. It seems it's not strong. And
so we've taken an ever so jolly little house for the autumn, because of
the air, you know. Didn't you know?"

No, he did not know. That was the worst of strained relations. You were
not informed of events in advance.

"Where?" he asked.

"Oh!" she said, pointing. "That way. On the road to Rottingdean. Near
the big girls' school. We came in on that lovely electric railway--along
the beach. Have you been on it, Mr Coe?"

Terrible! Rottingdean was precisely the scene of his honeymoon. The
hazard of fate was truly appalling. He and his wife might have walked
one day straight into the arms of her sister! He went hot and cold.

"And where are the others?" he asked nervously.

"Mamma"--she coloured as she used this word, so strange on her
lips--"mamma's at home. Father may come to-night. And Ada has brought us
here so that Jean can have his hair cut. He didn't want to come without
me."

"Ada?"

"Ada's a new servant. She's just gone in there again to see how long the
barber will be." Mimi indicated a barber's shop opposite. "And I'm
waiting here," she added.

"Mimi," he said, in a confidential tone, "can you keep a secret?"

She grew solemn. "Yes." She smiled seriously. "What?"

"About meeting me. Don't tell anybody you've met me to-day. See?"

"Not Jean?"

"No, not Jean. But later on you can tell--when I give you the tip. I
don't want anybody to know just now."

It was a shame. He knew it was a shame. He deliberately flattered her by
appealing to her as to a grown woman. He deliberately put a cajoling